


The Agreement

by brokenmemento



Series: Smoke and Retribution [1]
Category: Grace and Frankie (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Developing Relationship, F/F, Post-Season/Series 04, Resolved Sexual Tension, Sexual Tension, Starting Over
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-18
Updated: 2018-10-06
Packaged: 2019-04-24 16:43:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 40,828
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14359476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brokenmemento/pseuds/brokenmemento
Summary: What do you do when your life has fallen apart and is filled with loss? You add to it the only way you can.





	1. The Beginning of Reclamation

**Author's Note:**

> I felt like our fandom appreciates a nice smutty piece, so I wanted this fic to focus on that to make up for my other one lacking it. A story is interwoven here and will start out with a Teen rating, but it’s probably a more flimsy one that I intended. Also, I have the last chapter of "The Progression" mostly finished, but I have switched over to working on this one lately in between all of the real life stuff.

Summer burns in La Jolla and she can feel the prickle of sweat start at the nape of her neck and trickle down. The sun is setting on the horizon and she watches as insects dance off of the makeshift pond in front of her and Frankie’s apartment.

Soon, the air will cool to be somewhat bearable but right now, even the insects she’s been watching on the pond seem to have lost their way, spiraling into the air. Errantly, they bounce around in the sky, some managing escape, some erratically flinging themselves into doom, the zapper waiting at the edge of the little porch area.

She should get up, go inside and bathe. Washing away the heat and stickiness from the humidity would be the sensible thing to do but Grace is stationary, vision focused on that damn zapper.

The sound hammers in her ears, lodges deep into her head. Arthropod ash sprinkles down in a mist, hitting the wind and disappearing forever.

Grace can’t help but feel a strange connection with the events, feeling tossed into turmoil and zapped away into nothing, from almost everything that she’s known for the past four years. Isn’t the end of a life supposed to have a bit of stability? Shouldn’t she be able to spend the remainder of her years with a sense of safety, not worrying about whether or not people are noticing her attending the dining hall or if Frankie has pushed the blue button on the wall again for for the fiftieth time?

Frankie.

She closes her eyes against the thought of her friend, of her…? It’s hard to categorize after being floor people, balloon rides, escapes to Santa Fe, new housemates, fucking retirement homes.

At some point, Frankie has become more than just a friend. More than a person Grace had learned to tolerate. She’s become a tether to life and vibrancy, keeping them both from being victimized by the pitfalls of old age. A year ago, Frankie had told of how Grace had inspired her to do things beyond what she imagined she would be capable of. The compliment had resonated and stuck, a thing that meant more than it seemed on the surface.

Now, Grace thinks. Now maybe Frankie is the one propelling her along. And for that reason alone, she decides that she will follow Frankie literally anywhere.

So they steal Frankie’s belongings back and a toaster that isn’t, adding a golf cart to the mix by the end of the crazy ordeal.

Feeling the wind whip through her hair, it’s the most free Grace has felt in ages, a smile stuck to her face as Frankie drives down the edge of the beach and the sound of the Pacific and seagulls rings in her ears. Everywhere, life. People walking along the sand, enjoying the beautiful weather in La Jolla. The sun shines bright and so does the woman beside her, some of it reverberating back into Grace’s own form.

It’s a little like Thelma and Louise when the cart crashes into the sand and Frankie insists they make the trek the rest of the way to their home down the water’s edge. Grace knows her knee will protest by the end of the journey but it seems like a worthy endeavor to get home.

Home. The words sticks gooey like honey inside her chest and she feels the loss acutely too, a mixing of bittersweet nostalgia. It hasn’t even been that long, only a few months, but the passage of the moments seem much larger in a place like where they were. Arlene might not mind the cookie cutter rooms and set meal times but Grace wants to flow like the ocean, have a rhythm to her life that is hers by creation, not dictated by what others say.

_No business, no painting, consume food on our time, don’t own anything that might be considered as contraband, don’t live your life other than how we tell you to._

“It’s all a bunch of bullshit,” Frankie had grumbled one afternoon after coming back to tell Grace about how she couldn’t paint unless she went to a class for other seniors, as if she needs a class. She could teach the damn class, not that the operators of that hell hole would ever acknowledge.

Their home looms in the distance and Frankie claps excitedly, managing to hang on to her fondue pot amidst the excitement. Standing here in the salty wind and next to Frankie, it’s easy to forget the structure in front of them is in ruins on the inside, that it isn’t her fault they’re standing on the outside looking in.

A creaking fills her ears and Frankie lets the smile fade from her visage as her hand connects with the sign. Sold.

Their kids have fucking sold the house. Grace feels her knees buckle a bit and thank God Frankie is pulling her to the chairs in front of them or she isn’t sure she would be able to stay upright.

How has this all fallen apart so fast?

Frankie’s grabs at her hand and she feels her throat close, on the verge of tears and opening up to let it all overwhelm. The past few months have been too much. From the knee complications and surgery, to the house literally falling apart and the shitty contractor that made her feel like a dupe, to the kids betraying them both and throwing them away without a key into that Shady Pines wannabe.

As she stares at the ocean, she begins to wonder- _What kind of life can we salvage from this?_ What’s to look forward to or go back on? Everything she and Frankie have worked so hard to build from the ashes is now a messed up trash pile behind her. One which is feels inherently guilty for being the reason to.

If not for her lack of better judgement, wouldn’t they both being sitting here under different circumstances? The fact that the home behind them is no longer theirs makes anger and sorrow press tightly in Grace’s chest, what she’s felt the entire time since she and Frankie moved to Walden Villas.

“I’m getting it back,” Grace announces.

“What? Oh, honey. It’s already sold. We can’t get it back,” Frankie looks stricken.

“And why can’t we? We’ll just have to find out who put the bid in and pay them a personal visit. Convince them it isn’t worth their time. Hell, I’ll give them everything we’ve made from Vybrant if it comes down to it, but Frankie, we’ve got to do this. This is our home, our life.”

“Always my tenacious little prairie dog,” Frankie smiles, but there is a tinge of sadness to it as well.

Grace isn’t sure how long they sit and watch the waves hit the beach, how long they both hold each other’s hand while wishing and hoping that all they had to do was walk up the small hill to throw open the doors to their home. It’s been a few months, ones she thought she was learning to adjust inside, but the sheer magnitude of the loss hits her squarely again.

With the sun beginning to ease closer to tuck itself into the horizon, Grace feels herself rising and offering a hand to help Frankie out of the chair. She braces herself on her one good leg and Frankie grasps her. Grace stumbles a little back, Frankie stumbles a little forward with the motion. It brings them to within inches of each other, Grace’s hand resting on Frankie’s hip to steady her, Frankie’s upon Grace’s shoulder and neck.

The breeze is cooling and Grace feels her breath escaping her in short puffs because Frankie is looking at her in that way, like she wants to say something to Grace and it would mean the whole world.

“I don’t want to go back,” Frankie whispers. Her fingers trace along Grace, brush through her blonde hair. “Don’t take me back there, Grace.”

Like it’s Grace’s choice. Like she is still looking to Grace to fix everything when Grace is the reason it all fell apart in the first place.

The tone shoots to her core and she wishes she had a magic wand or lamp or that magic was fucking real in the first place. Then she would know what to do and how to help them instead of floundering like a fish out of water. Possibilities seem nonexistent, their kids barely a passing thought. Robert and Sol have been too accepting of the fact that they both were placed in Walden Villas to begin with, so Grace feels a stab of anger toward them that has pretty much lasted subconsciously for the last four years.

“Where do you want me to take you? I don’t know where to go,” Grace admits.

“There has to be some place we can stay until you figure it all out with the house. If you’re serious about that.”

Another blow. Why wouldn’t she be? Does everything now have to hit Grace directly in the chest? Does she have to _feel_ everything so strongly these days?

Grace’s answer comes in the form of her arm wrapping around Frankie’s waist and leading them silently away from the chairs that will stay nestled on the beach, stationary in a place they both long to rest their weary souls.

It takes a while to trek back to the abandoned cart, the knee not holding up as well on the journey back as it had on the way there. Grace drives this time, all the life seeming to have drained from her with the turning and reading of the “For Sale-Sold” sign.

They drop the cart off, wanting to be less of thieves and more runaways. Grace calls a cab and tells it to take them to the nearest, non dump of a motel. One with clean sheets, showers, and no fucking blue buttons or set meal times or stupid restrictions.

Checking in with nothing seems awkward in and of itself but by the time Grace slides the key into the door, she can’t help but not care much anymore. She watches as Frankie stands, looking rather forlorn and she wonders if she herself has the same look upon her own visage.

There are two beds and Frankie lets herself fall onto the far one, nearest the bathroom, and lets out a large sigh. Grace stands and watches, unsure of what to do. Frankie’s eyes have been closed but she opens one and looks at Grace, then motions toward a spot beside her.

She sits gingerly, already feeling the long walk in every protesting bone in her body. Frankie curls her fingers around Grace’s hand and Grace feels something different altogether.

“Not exactly what I imagined, but it beats the Red Roof Inn,” Frankie sighs.

“It will have to do, in a pinch,” Grace replies. _Until I can start snooping to get our life back_ , she thinks.

When Frankie pats her knee, she winces a bit and Frankie bolts upright, eyes wide.

“Oh crap, I’m so sorry. Do you want me to massage it and make it feel better?”

“Oh, nothing a little steam and hot water from a shower won’t help to ease up,” Grace waves off, underscores what she really feels lighting up her body like a circuit board.

“I could help you with that too, but I don’t think you’ll like it.”

There _it_ is, _again_. That impossible thing that she’s been trying to ignore for the last year or more. Because her knee-jerk reaction is that she has already said yes and they’re standing under the spray together, washing away the years and failure and fierce loss.

She shakes her head and laughs instead, standing up. It’s better to deflect and retreat. To find some solitude and have time to think. She leaves Frankie on the bed, feeling her eyes burn into her as she disappears into the other room.

Grace closes the door gently and lets out a puff of breath. They have nothing, just the clothes on their backs and each other. Thankfully a couple of robes hang on the back of the door, soft terry cloth. It will have to do as cover for now until they can figure out what the hell to do next.

She showers none too quickly, and when she steps out of the bath, she grabs the robe and towels at her hair. She’s got the robe draped precariously over her front, having not deposited it over her completely. Suddenly there is a frantic knock on the door and Grace clutches the robe tighter to herself.

“I know this is a serious boundary issue but I haven’t been to the bathroom in forever and I know I should have had the foresight to go before you got into there. Sadly now, it’s hindsight and I really have to go,” Frankie explains on the other side of the door.

“I’m not dressed yet!” Grace exclaims, but oddly stands stationary.

“What, do you have something I don’t? Come on, Grace. Pretty please?”

Before she can think better of it, she walks to the door and opens it with the free hand that isn’t pinning the robe against herself. Frankie appears and looks dumbfounded at the state that Grace is in, the droplets of water still sticking to her body and her hair flat against her neck. Dimly, she’s aware there is a mirror behind her and her, well her behind isn’t covered.

This is what Frankie gets though, isn’t it? And she doesn’t have anything that Frankie doesn’t, so why should she feels ashamed? Stuffing her insecurities down, she decides after forty years, it’s time to give Frankie a little payback for flashing her chest to Grace so many years ago.

She lets her hair fall in front of her face as she towels off a still damp spot on her shoulder which shifts the robe so that it isn’t covering...much. She hears an intake of breath and smirks a bit to herself. Her most private of areas has remained so but Grace is almost sure Frankie has caught some glimpses of her chest and back end. It’s odd to be so bold but she feels a thrill in it too.

“Aren’t you just a little voyeur,” Frankie murmurs.

Grace pulls the robe up over her and cinches it at the waist, then runs a hand through her hair. Making her way to Frankie, she leans over a little too close perhaps and offers lowly, “I thought you were in dire need of the restroom.”

“Yeah, well, I’m an artist, Grace. When you show me something like that, how am I not going to stand and admire for a few seconds?”

Grace stops on the way out, turning to look at Frankie. The comment catches her off guard, not at all delivered in a playful tone that she has come to expect. “What?”

Frankie stands, immobile. Silent. But then she shakes her head and gives Grace more than she’s had in years. “You’re breathtaking.”

Grace turns and leaves, feeling her own breath taken straight out of her lungs.


	2. The Proposition

As it turns out, it’s harder to get a house back than she had originally thought. Not that she’d imagined it an easy feat, no. But this? This is fucking brutal.

Making a call to Arlene had been the first thing on the list, to ask if she could enter their space at Walden Villas and nab a few things for them since they were both refusing to go back. Moments later, a picture pinged her messages and she had to zoom in to see the banner. “Surprise, you’re alive again.” Well, at least a bit of good news amidst the trash heap she was currently drowning in.

After fighting with yet another person, the list having grown too massive to even keep up with anymore, Grace gets a name. Only, of course, after throwing around the name of Robert and Sol’s firm and threatening legal action against the unauthorized sale of their home without their consent or knowledge. She leaves out the tidbit that they did have knowledge to some degree of what was happening, agreeing to let the kids take over the rights to the home. She never imagined the little shits would sale it though, just use some of their money from the company to find a contractor to fix the damage while setting them up in the retirement community short term.

Grace feels bile rising in the back of her throat at the thought of their kids. They haven’t spoken very much over the last few months. Every time she sees their name on the caller ID of her phone, she goes from complacency to incensed. It’s still too fucking raw and new, what they’ve done to them. Practically locking them up and throwing away the key.

Punching the numbers with her fingers, she dials the line of the name she has managed to finagle. An answer comes after a few seconds.

“Hello?” the voice asks.

“My name is Grace Hanson and I know you don’t know me, but you’ve recently come into possession of something that’s very dear to me.”

“Oh, yeah? And what might that be?” the voice fires back, a little snippy in the response but with a lilt of amusement too.

“The beach house in La Jolla? Whatever you’ve acquired it for, I’ll give you what you paid, plus half of the mortgage more,” Grace deals. It’s extravagant in its offering and would pretty much leave her and Frankie dead ass broke in their business account. Thankfully, the numbers are looking solid for this quarter as well, so they stand to make a profit. Which could replenish what Grace is suggesting.

“The place was in shambles. I’ve had to gut the place and begin to restore it to its former glory. It’s been quite an undertaking, one I’ve already got contractors going on. I was thinking a quaint little bed and breakfast…”

“Double!” Grace cries, gripping the phone tightly and whimpering in desperation to not hear what all this person is planning with the ruins of their life. If they weren’t going to be dead ass broke before, her new number surely will send them into bankruptcy. Somehow, it seems worth it though. Grace will learn to live like a hermit if she can get this back for Frankie, for the both of them.

“Mmm, okay. So my interest has been piqued. Normally I am not one for dalliances in the too good to be true category but if you were looking for a bite, you’ve got one. Meet me at the place in an hour? Either you’re John D. Rockefeller's sister or the Mata Hari one because there is no way you actually think you can swing paying me anywhere near what you just offered. But I do love a good story, honey, so see you in sixty.”

Grace would be hearing dial tone were this the old days of telephone conversations but instead is met only with silence. She pulls the phone back to see that the connection has been severed and she’s staring at the lock screen to her phone, a picture of she and Frankie at Frankie’s gallery opening last year.

She stands and walks over to the table by the window, grabbing her purse as she puts in for the cab. On her way by, Frankie throws a piece of popcorn in Grace’s direction that narrowly misses going down her shirt. Grace frowns a little and crosses her arms, staring Frankie down. The woman in front of her is a mess. Her hair stands out in all directions and she’s occupied the space on both sides of her with various bags of heart attack inducing junk food and snacks. While Grace would love to bemoan the fact that all of it is literal stroke in a bag, she can’t find it in herself to chastise Frankie now. Not in the middle of everything that is going on.

“I’m going to hustle a guy about the house. Think you can manage to un-dig yourself from Cholesterol Mountain and accompany me?” Grace asks.

Frankie eyes her warily, too bent on eating her emotions it seems. A year ago, she had practically begged Grace to take down the man. Now it’s as if she can’t even muster the care.

“Okay, I hate to do this “tough love” thing with you, but I will if I have to. Get off your ass, run a comb through your hair, put on your best pair of palazzo pants, and be ready to go in ten minutes. The cab should be here by then,” Grace commands. When Frankie opens her mouth to speak, she silences her with a finger. “No arguing.”

She watches as Frankie stands and treks across the room to grab her only pair of palazzo pants and a shirt out of the meager amount of items Grace managed to ask Arlene to get ready for her to pick up. Frankie shoots her a look and Grace cocks her head to the side and raises her eyebrows in a silent, yet questioning gesture. She receives no kick back from Frankie though, who disappears into the bathroom.

Five minutes later, she re-emerges looking slightly more put together. She grumbles something low under her breath that Grace doesn’t catch and suddenly, inviting her seems like the worst idea she’s had in awhile.

“Are you going to cheer up or should I drop you off at the Starbucks nearest the old place so you can feel even more super weird about life?” Grace scolds.

They walk down the hall of the motel and Frankie doesn’t say anything until they’re deposited in the back of the cab and rolling towards the beach house. “What if this doesn’t work?” she asks softly.

The old saying goes, don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Grace supposes the idiomatic expression has some merit but she’s already hatched her chickens, counted them, and started collecting the eggs for breakfasts at the kitchen island in their home again.

To think that this could all fall through and they could both end up back at the home strikes a nerve in her she wasn’t ready to feel. So much of their lives have been about missteps lately, so not succeeding on the house is a thing Grace has refused to entertain.

As the cab approaches the front of the house, Grace spots a rather looming figure. Slender, maybe reaching 6’4, and dressed in the loudest suit she’s ever seen is an attractive man with black rimmed glasses. Attractive might be pushing the terminology too far in the wrong direction. His bone structure is flawless and he has a look of fierceness Grace isn’t sure she’s ready to combat in person.

“Well, well. So not what I was expecting from the voice on the phone,” he smiles, extending a hand delicately.

“Nor I,” Grace answers, grasping it and receiving a more hearty shake than she anticipated.

He eyes Frankie but seems to think better of approaching her based on the look on her face she’s currently sporting, so he offers a small wave and then clasps his hands together theatrically.

“Let’s get down to business, shall we?” He spins on his black leather shoed heels and walks briskly toward the house.

Grace eyes Frankie but follows along, not exactly ready for the trek down memory lane, to see the house still in shambles. Frankie follows along like a wounded puppy, no doubt feeling a bit of what Grace is as well. Their home is a laceration that has never healed and they should have talked a bit more about how painful this process might be yesterday on the beach. Then, the thought had been so singular: Get this back for us.

When he opens the door, he gestures for them to enter first. His chest puffs out a little and he smiles to both of them when he sees the looks on their faces. No longer are there gaping holes in the wall, copper pipes missing. Grace feels a little of herself healing as well, focusing on the drywall that has been used to cover the atrocities. It’s nowhere near complete, nowhere near perfect. But it’s a start.

“I’ve had the rights to the house for a couple of weeks. Call me impatient, but I saw the potential in this place and was eager to get it back to where I envisioned it could be.” He stops and eyes both Grace and Frankie seriously. “I’m going to go out on a limb here and say you don’t need a tour of the place since you sought me out.”

“This was our place, before,” Frankie finally speaks up from behind Grace. “Our shit head children put it on the market without our knowledge.”

He looks sympathetic to a degree and shakes his head, emitting a tsk. Sympathy disappears and dubiousness appears as he looks over to Grace. Like he wants to haggle with her but doesn’t know how to approach the subject. She’s worked with this type of person before, can read people and their business acumen with a sharpness that still surprises her sometimes.

“The numbers?” she asks and he bats his eyes and nods his head. Alright then. “I meant what I said on the phone. I’ll pay you what you want for it. I’d say with whatever reasonable offer you are willing to agree to but I’ve already made an astronomical one, so the ball really is in your court.”

“I’m not one to usually take advantage of people’s suffering but I was looking to this place as a business venture. It’s prime real estate for out of towners looking to enjoy a slice of California life at the beach with privacy in tow as well,” he explains.

Grace would ask him to cut to the chase if she weren’t try to kiss a little ass and be cordial about this whole ordeal. She nods her agreement at the situation, or what seems like it on the surface, and silently begs him to reach the point of all of this. If it’s a ploy for more money, Grace isn’t sure she has it in her to offer much more.

“I’ve told you what I’m capable of doing. You know our situation. I’m not sure what else to tell you,” she admits.

He looks at her long and hard, and she can see the wheels turning in his mind. After what feels like an eternity, he finally speaks.

“Take over the bid on the contractors and I’ll sell the house back to you for what I paid for it,” he offers.

“You’re kidding,” Frankie says, stunned from behind Grace.

“Oh, yeah. That does seem a bit generous of me and completely un-Californian. Don’t ask me to cover the closing costs and add on an extra 10k for my complete and utter devastation over losing my bed and breakfast dream so I can take myself on a nice little diddy of a shopping spree. Consider it sold at that point.”

“Fine,” Grace sighs, not willing to put up a fight. It’s a more than generous and she just wants the never ending nightmare they’ve been living for the past few months to be over.

“I’ll have someone contact you about the paperwork. Honestly, I’m really sorry about your kids,” he says, laying a hand on Grace’s shoulder. “That’s a fucked up thing to do.”

He turns and disappears, leaving them amidst the memories and events of their old life. Grace throws Frankie a smile who is on the verge of tears herself. She throws her arms around Grace and holds on for dear life.

“You did it!” she exclaims. “I can’t frickin believe it.”

Grace says nothing, only buries her face into Frankie’s hair. She wants to rejoice in the homecoming but at the same time, to lose herself in this moment. To tuck herself inside of the feeling of being in the one place she belongs the most.

When they return to the motel, it’s as if the energy has been drained from both of them. They order take out, get more comfortable, and plop down beside one another on Frankie’s bed.

Lying side by side, Grace lets her shoulder brush against Frankie and sighs in contentment. Things are starting to return to normalcy, finally getting back to where they belong.

Frankie rolls over and tucks herself into Grace’s side. She finds her hand and follows along the long and slender outline of it, barely touching, creating a pathway up and down. Frankie treats it like it’s its own story, something hidden inside the wrinkles and veins that’s worth telling. Grace lets her eyes close, lost in the feeling, in the comfort.

It’s been awhile since they’ve done this, share a space at night. The act is like wrapping herself in a warm blanket, one who happens to be Frankie now.

“I can’t believe you got the beach house back,” Frankie smiles radiantly into her shoulder. Maybe cuddles a bit closer with her words, fusing herself to Grace’s form.

Grace wants to say, _Haven’t I proved to you that I’m serious? Haven’t I shown that I mean what I say? I gave up my freedom, my independence for you._

Tonight, in this space, there are no longer any Jacob’s or Nick’s-just a Grace and a Frankie. Somehow that’s all that matters, all that’s ever mattered. It’s why Grace agreed to accelerate her end of life outcome, because anywhere Frankie is has become the place she most wants to be. It’s odd how much can change in a span of four years, a relatively short amount of time by most people’s standards. For Grace though, it feels like it was the most important of the seventy five she’s lived so far.

“I told you I would,” Grace whispers against the top of Frankie’s head.

“I wasn’t sure we would ever make it out of that place,” she admits. “I thought I would…that we would…”

She stops and gazes into Grace’s eyes, her brows knitted together in a bothersome look. Grace doesn’t have to ask what she’s thinking. She already knows.

“I’m not leaving you, Frankie. Not if I can help it.”

“Grace, honey,” she smiles, tracing along the expanse of her face. Their eyes remained locked, neither looking away.

Emotion swells, something untouchable lurking even though their hands are connected to one another’s bodies. Even though Frankie is looking at her in that way again. She looks as if she is about to say something, but thinks better of it.

“Time isn’t given to us in infinites and despite all of the other things I believe, I don’t know how long I’ve got this version of you,” Frankie finishes, ducking her head a little.

Grace’s throat swells and feels as if it might close completely. She shifts uncomfortably, fidgets a bit more before settling to answer. “It’s easier not to dwell on all of this and face each morning with a sense of motivation, not expiration. How much more fully am I going to live my life if I don’t think about it?”

“Everyone talks about Bucket Lists. Maybe we should do something like that. You know, since we are at the end of this plane of existence, so to speak. Oh, Grace. What would be the first thing on your bucket list?”

Her eyes feel heavy and there’s too much swirling around. Frankie is warm against her and honestly, she isn’t sure what her list would even consist of. She goes to what feels right to speak.

“Something like this,” she murmurs, bringing her hand to rest on Frankie’s hip. The fabric of her pajamas is cool under Grace’s fingertips and in this moment, she feels profoundly grateful for the woman beside her. “Tomorrow is a new day, fresh with possibility. Let's take solace in that.”

When she falls asleep, she dreams in a whorl of distant thoughts: what the beach house can be crafted into, where Vybrant will need to go after she empties the account, why Frankie has become the sturdy constant in a life fraught with change.

* * *

They end up having to go back to Walden Villas but with the clear understanding between them and the staff that it’s a temporary thing, until the paperwork is finalized.

“Fuck all yall’s,” Frankie smiles and waves her middle finger as they walk out the day the beach house is officially theirs again.

Grace can’t help but laugh and not give a shit. She’d rather disappear than ever wind up in a retirement community again. Screw the trajectory. Screw everyone and what they’ve tried to do to them. Anger builds in her and she doesn’t want to forgive what’s been done. How hard it has been to reassemble.

The house is empty, a blank page waiting to be filled again. The potential of what it can be restored to fills both Frankie and her with an immense sense of anticipation. For when it looks like them both again.

Despite the mild impatience that both of them have, they make sure to take their time in the reshaping of the structure. Frankie brings in two mattresses while the repairs continue and lays them side by side on the floor, finds clean sheets, and makes them up. She explains to Grace that they can pretend it’s a camp out and tell one another stories to fall asleep, because that’s what helps her.

“Well, sort of. Like I said before, it’s really the other thing…”

“Yes! I remember. Quite...vividly,” Grace cuts her off.

They lie side by side at night, talking and learning about aspects of the others life that they never knew about. Grace learns more about Teddie, the heartache attributed to Frankie’s brother, secrets never spoken tied to Jacob.

It’s hard to offer equality in the anecdotes, some facets of Grace’s past too bruised to share. Playing it close to the vest for the most part, she lets it slip about her troublesome upbringing. Admits to an emotionally distant mother who disappeared when she was ten, leaving her in therapy for years. She describes her relationships with men as a counterbalance to the bereftness she felt as a child, picking the wrong ones time and time again.

The house comes together around them as they meet night after night on the mattresses to weave more tales into the other's ears. Grace watches Frankie sleep much of the time, odd stirrings in her enough to unnerve.

Before long, the camp outs on the floor are no longer a necessity, with space ready for them both to have their respective rooms. Frankie gives up her area on the ground floor for the sake of Grace’s knee and re-inhabits her studio.

“But don’t you want to be in the main house?” Grace asks one day before any decisions have been made.

“Oh, I don’t mind. Sometimes I get into an artistic whirlwind that keeps me up at some pretty odd hours. I wouldn’t want to bug you with that or paint splotches on everything, with it being newly redone and all,” Frankie explains.

 _Redo the whole fucking house in Georgia O’Keefe flowers for all I care. Hang up your vagina art and put dick pottery everywhere_ , Grace wants to say. As long as Frankie is near.

In the end, the beach house becomes an amalgam of their styles, no longer separate partitions to designate a certain room to one or the other. Each has elements uniquely them, where either can find solace among the walls.

They settle into the old rhythm of things, reclaim the moments of the past that have been missing in the last few months. No longer cast out and floundering, they find solid purchase in being home again.

It is night, several weeks after they have the house back in order. Frankie had suggested one of their couch hangouts, filled with bad programming and even worse snack items.

The tray of half eaten and picked over selections sits forgotten on the table. Grace’s knee is iced and only a dull ache is emitted from it upon occasion. She has her head leaned back against the cushion, halfway listening but mostly not paying attention.

The TV has been playing something she isn’t interested in because Frankie has picked the program for the tenth time in a row. So when the set goes black all of a sudden and Frankie turns to look at her, it startles her out of her reverie.

Frankie’s look is contemplative, serious. It’s a look Grace rarely sees because Frankie is a fury of energy and joking charm most of the time. These bouts are usually reserved for existential crises that ramble on until they burn out eventually.

“I’ve been thinking…” Frankie begins and Grace can’t help but scoff. Here they go, on some wild tangent, no doubt. “Now hold on to your knickers. This is serious.”

Grace can’t help but feel dubious, waiting for whatever is going to flow out of Frankie next.

“I’ve been...sexually frustrated since Jacob left,” Frankie offers. “At our age, who woulda thunk that something like that missing from my life would be such a big deal. But it’s a big deal, Grace.”

“I’m fairly certain that’s why we made a vibrator, Frankie. To deal with that...issue.”

“Yes, but admit it. It’s not the same as a person,” Frankie almost whines, nostalgia lacing her words. Like she’s remembering it with such fondness she can almost feel it.

“What do you want me to do about it?” Grace asks back, perplexed. Surely that isn’t what this is about. Surely Frankie isn’t making another comment that is teetering on the line between sanity and absurdity.

They’ve already been here before, so many times. A plethora of comments are adding up to create a pile that Grace isn’t sure she can ignore anymore, isn’t sure Frankie wants her to. _Do you want me to do stuff to you?, Can’t or won’t Grace?, Let’s take Faith out and pretend we’re a couple and have people guess which one birthed our baby, He wants to have a threesome._

Frankie tilts her head to the side and seems to have a revelation, as if it hadn’t been there before she started this line of comment and inquiry.

“Companionship is important, connecting your soul to another person every now and again. It’s good for the aura surrounding every physical body on this plane of existence.”

“I’m not getting into the details of astral projection again. Last time was enough to numb my brain to the subject forever,” Grace grumbles, rubbing her temples. She knows that whatever direction this conversation goes, she’s going to wind up with a headache.

“What I am saying is that in order for me to fulfill my life to the fullest, best it can possible be in my waning years, I feel like sexual stimulation needs to be a part of my life. And if you’ve noticed, my dance card is no longer filled. Or sex card. Well, no one has a sex card but…”

“What are you getting at, Frankie? Again, I feel like discussing this with me is a moot point, don’t you? You sort of need a man for this conversation.”

“A man?! Grace, are you kidding me? There’s more than one way to tango, as I’m sure you’re well aware. A man isn’t needed for sexual stimulation, only procreation. Which, with us, is like beating a dead horse with a stick. Come on. Haven’t you even see Wonder Woman yet? Diana, princess of Themyscira makes this point beautifully to the poor sot beside her on the boat.”

Frankie shakes her head as if Grace needs to be offered a dunce cap and sit on a stool in front of the sex-ed class. As if her thoughts haven’t entered Grace’s brain too much over the span of her life. It’s too much to think about, too much to lose. Isn’t it?

She’s never been with a woman, never dreamed the option would present itself so late in her life. Why now? Shouldn’t this be something she experimented with in college and left behind long ago for social norms?

“So let me get his straight,” Grace begins but stops when she sees Frankie smirk and her eyes narrow to slits, sparkling despite themselves. Of course, everything has to have a pun to it where they’re concerned. “You know what I mean,” she warns.

“Do I?”

“Fucking hell, Frankie. Stop the games. Are you really asking me, honest to God asking me…”

“I don’t know that I’d bring _God_ into this…”

Grace isn’t going to make it to the end of this. She’s either going to yank out her hair, have a brain aneurysm, or scream bloody murder. It’s never easy with Frankie. Then she chastises herself again for the word choice and thanks the powers that be she didn’t let that fly out verbally either.

“What do you want from me?” Grace finally whines, exasperated.

Suddenly Frankie is right beside her, leg pressed against leg, heat invading heat. She’s so close that Grace can see the flecks of green in her mostly blue eyes, feels her heart trip and stammer as Frankie wraps her right arm around Grace’s shoulder.

Quietly, she begins. “I trust you more than any other person in this world, Grace. I think maybe Jacob knew that, even when I hadn’t realized it. Maybe that started the fracture, maybe it didn’t. Either way, he isn’t here and I’m alone for the indefinite future. Could be until the end.” She pushes a strand of blonde hair behind Grace’s ear, looks at her intently. “But I’m not really alone, am I? I’ve got you. And it came to me after our conversation at the hotel that maybe I could, that we could, let each other be what we’re both lacking. Sexually.”

“You want to have sex with me?” It’s barely a whisper escaping Grace. Like an unformed bubble leaving prematurely, in danger of being popped, ruptured. “And you’ve been holding this in for weeks?”

“I want us to be that for each other, if we need it. When we need it. If you’re okay with it,” she carefully explains. “Call it number one on my Bucket List.”

Her hand traces Grace’s cheek and it’s all Grace can do not to whimper into the touch. She has to close her eyes against the boiling emotions, seemingly so impossible for a body to hold such turmoil.

“Frankie, I...I don’t know what to say.” Other than _why would that be number one on your list?_

“Then don’t say anything. Just think about it,” she hears, and then feels pressure on her cheek, Frankie placing a soft kiss against her skin. She feels the couch dip, and when she has the courage to open her eyes again, all that’s left is the dangling proposition by a woman who is no longer visible.


	3. Failure to Launch

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm going to go ahead and up the rating to 'M,' so take that into account if such elements of an M story aren't your thing. But since that's the whole premise to this story, you probably wouldn't be reading it if it weren't. Before long, the rating will probably go up yet again to 'E.'

Time passes and it’s almost as if nothing was said between them, the conversation never coming up. They eat their meals together, work on the business some, follow the normal routine they have had for the last four years of their life. Days turn into weeks and neither of them bring up the proposition Frankie offered that night on the couch. 

Is it eating at Frankie like it is Grace? She picks at the corner of one of her nails, a nervous tick to focus attention. Anything to not let on or show Frankie how much she isn’t paying attention to the Facebook comments being read aloud from the Vybrant page. Delivering vagina balloons and that whole fiasco not so long ago has soured her a bit on looking online, still a little fresh sting against wounded pride. Despite it turning out well in the end. 

“...An extension of myself, delivering pleasure whenever the mood strikes,” Frankie drolls on and Grace can’t help but zero in on the one, singular thought she’s had for the last blasted 21 days: hers and Frankie’s pleasure together, given by one to the other. 

When sounds stops, Grace looks up to see Frankie watching her. Straightening her back and shoulders, she asks “What?”

“You’re somewhere else,” Frankie smiles.

“I am not.” Maybe a little too vehement for a lie wrapped in the real truth. It’s a lot easier to say than something completely foolish and along the lines of  _ Yes, I was thinking about you underneath me and my hand going underneath things of yours.  _ Another utterance that must remain unspoken.

“Looking at the testimonials of our customers used to perk us both up. It gave us creative fury to pour into the business, make it better. We need to make sure we keep connecting with the little ladies, Grace. We don’t want to turn into corporate hacks, only concerned with how much money we bring in.”

The only connecting Grace can really think of has absolutely nothing to do with the business, but partaking in some banter with Frankie might shift her thoughts to a safer zone of modus operandi. 

“I don’t think we ever have to worry about turning into corporate hacks. Vybrant’s doing well but unless we start mass producing, I think we will manage to operate as a little old lady business for the foreseeable future,” Grace answers, opens her laptop to their website. Finally. 

Frankie eyes her with an intensity that makes Grace shift a little in her seat. She clicks to bring up expense reports and other various spreadsheets, something to stare at other than Frankie’s face with those pouty lips that Grace has been wondering what they would feel like against her own…

“And here I was thinking I was just going to stare at a computer screen all day by myself. I’m glad to see your body in motion now,” Frankie says.

Grace lets out a strangled cough.  _ Body in motion.  _ Fucking hell. Is everything from now on going to hold some sort of sexuality to it? Why can’t she function normally? Why can’t she do this, not let it upend her like Frankie? Who seems to be doing annoyingly well with an idea she brought up in the first place, but hasn’t mentioned since. 

“I’d show you the expense reports and projected figures for this quarter but I know how bad you are at math,” Grace quips, looking at the spreadsheets and the mixture of numbers. Anything to get her mind off of…

“I’m more interested in new business. While the idea of five million dollars is enticing…”

“Frankie, we had to buy the house back with the money out of the account. Sales are holding steady but regardless, we were nowhere close to five million dollars.”  _ And likely won’t be for as long as we are alive _ , Grace wants to say. Doesn’t. 

“So maybe we need a fresh idea to start raking the money back in. Don’t get me wrong, I know the Ménage is our cash cow. Think of how we could expand if we embraced another market though.”

“And what market would that be?” Grace questions, remembers back to the condom fiasco. How long had it taken her to dissuade Frankie from that idea? 

Grace reaches for her Propel on the edge of the table, feels the need to be hydrated for whatever marathon of a conversation is about to happen. She’d like to be able to predict what’s down the pike with Frankie, but honestly, there is no telling what will come out of her mouth.

“Okay, wait for it," Frankie says holding up her hands, but then tells Grace immediately. "Older lesbians.” She smiles. 

Grace should have known better than to be drinking anything because part of it comes out in a rather embarrassing, almost campy spit-take. Frankie frowns as Grace tries to redeem some semblance of control. Grabbing a napkin, she wipes away the remnants. 

“What?” It comes out incredulous. Grace can’t help but look aghast at the sudden change of topic direction. 

“The Ménage is a powerful, orgasmic tool that can be enjoyed by many types of sexual preferences, but we are women and I want to make sure we empower those of our gender. And offer something for those not so much inclined to like…” Frankie stops and eyes Grace who is barely keeping it together. 

Grace has a death grip with her left hand on the chair and feels her nails burying into her thigh under the table with the other. She’s not going to last this, may actually let a yelping squawk pour forth. Already, she’s let more auditory evidence of bewilderment escape her than usual.  _ Get it the fuck together, Grace _ , she tells herself. 

_ “ _ The male genitalia,” Frankie finishes. 

“Okay, so if we aren’t making penis shaped vibrators, what would the lesbian market be interested in?” Grace queries. “Because from experience, the penis shape works pretty well.”

“Well, you haven’t had lesbian sex,” Frankie answers, but then Grace notices an imperceptible quirk of her lips. “Unless you’re keeping mum on that aspect of your sex life.”

“Don’t you think I’d have said something by now? With all of your oversharing and then prying, I’m sure you would have gotten it out of me eventually.”

“There’s so much more I could get out of you,” Frankie mumbles behind her computer screen. 

“What?” Grace’s head jerks up from looking at the Vybrant website. She’s not like Frankie. Her ears aren’t just ornamental at this point and she can absolutely hear, but she has to question what she thinks she heard come out of Frankie’s mouth. 

“I said there’s so much more we could get out of the company,” she says with a wave of her hand, deflecting. “I'm kicking myself for not saving the lube idea for our business. Now it belongs to Say Grace, a bastardization of what I created. With or without palm oil.” 

Grace rubs her temples, trying hard to narrow her focus to  _ the _ business and not  _ her _ business. Is Frankie bringing this up as a way to test her? Does she want Grace to talk about her proposition? The multi-windowed screen in front of her blurs, a jumble of numbers and letters that maybe meant something thirty minutes ago, but now lack any coherence. 

“So do you have an idea on this lesbian sex toy thing or are you just trying to get me flustered about something I don't know the first thing about?” Grace eyes her. The last part of her line of inquiry takes on a loaded meaning. She's not just asking Frankie about what the lesbian market would want. It's a thing she wants to educate herself on, if anything to maybe understand what it really is that Frankie has offered for the two of them. If she can figure it out, perhaps she can move past longing for something she can't conceive of fully right now.

“I have a few ideas swirling around up here,” Frankie moves her fingers in a wiggling motion, and Grace has to fight back a whimper from imagining what those can do, what they're capable of.

_ Ugh, I need to get laid _ , Grace thinks to herself. It's been over five months since she split ways with Nick. While on some level being with him had its rewards, she found it difficult to commit to a man who took so much effort to feel good around. Not that he asked her to do all of it, no. It was more of an echo of her own insecurities, about being her age instead of his. For every area it worked, it had an opposite aspect that didn’t. Is that why what Frankie has suggested isn't is as absurd as it should be while it rolls around in her brain?

“Put together a brainstorming list and then we can discuss it on our next work day,” Grace finally supplies. Thinks that maybe it would be easier to read than listen to. That way she would have something to devote her attention to other than Frankie’s face as she discusses things that Grace has thought of far too often lately. 

Frankie’s phone chimes and a smile lifts the corners of her mouth. She types out a text message quickly and then glances up to see Grace watching her.

“Hate to bounce, but Bud and Allison have invited me for a granddaughter loving brunch, so the lesbian sex toy thing will have to be rain checked,” she explains. 

In the last few months, a lot of healing has had to occur. While Grace still feels fairly bitter towards her daughters and Frankie’s sons, she understands why Frankie hasn’t held out in anger as long as Grace has: she’s got more to lose. 

Grace loves her own grandchildren in the only way she knows how, but Frankie does it so much better where Faith is concerned. She’s at ease, she’s not afraid to get dirty or be tired or look ridiculous. She’s the things Grace has only minimally tried at with her own and perhaps that is why the toy drawer in her room sits a little fuller than her heart. She’s just plain not good at being there for the important stuff. 

The last four years have been an exercise in that and while Grace has gotten better, she’s far from perfect. Frankie has her own flaws, like accidentally nearing the Mexican border with a newborn, but old wounds seem to have be patched between the bulk of the Bergstein clan. She knows Frankie is cognizant of her missteps and is trying desperately to never let it happen again. 

“Squishy cheeks tend to derail anything else,” Grace agrees, understands. It’s no mystery that loving on a beautiful grand-baby would hold more appeal than talking sales figures and new ideas. 

“Squishy baby cheeks. Our business tends to involve another set of cheeks,” Frankie wisecracks. “Oh, hey! Maybe I can develop something for ass play…”

“Brunch, Frankie?” Grace interrupts loudly. 

“Right, brunch. I’ll be home later. Let's have dinner together?” she suggests. 

Grace nods and closes both of their laptops as Frankie, thankfully, walks out the door. 

For the rest of the day, she manages to stay busy. Visiting Brianna at her old headquarters proves as infuriating as ever. How the woman has managed to run her built from scratch company in the ground defies explanation really. Pouring through numbers for a second time today proves slightly more productive than the early morning venture. 

Coming across the sales figures for the last quarter, Grace feels herself fill with a sense of pride as she looks at the top performers product listing. Frankie’s lube sits atop the rest. Apparently the rest of the world is finally learning how damn wonderful the stuff is. 

The first time she’d touched herself while using it, (and not long after, paired with their vibrator) it’d been like the clouds parted and the sun was shining a light on parts of her that had been hidden. The combination of the two turned her life around completely. As far as using it with a partner, she’s not yet ventured into that realm, sticking with the old standbys. To bring Frankie’s concoction into an experience with someone else seemed like the telling of a private secret, something she wants to keep for herself.

“So, I see that the bulk of your sales were from the lube,” Grace brings up as Brianna takes a sip of her espresso. 

Brianna stares at her and then narrows her eyes into a squint, like she’s in a one on one match and Grace has just done a trick move, something she has to learn to recover from. Grace has no catch in bringing it up, isn’t meaning to goad or antagonize. She’s genuinely happy that it’s a best seller, doing better than most of her own products have done in years. 

“Yes,” Brianna acknowledges, slowly. “What’s your angle?”

“I have to have an angle to bring up something that’s actually working in your company?”

“Fucking hell, there it is. Yes, I know I’ve basically got a dung heap going right now, but not everything is spiraling down the toilet, Mom.”

“Good to know because looking at these reports…”

“I’m beginning to question why I ever asked you for help,” Brianna growls, downs another sip of her overpriced, french press drink. 

“Because I managed to run this place for years without turning it to shit. Also because I currently have another successful business that isn’t in the black,” Grace snaps. 

“Oh, even after your ridiculous bid to get the house back and paying the contractors to get it in order?” Brianna asks smugly.

“Which I never would have had to do in the first damn place if you, your ‘I’m only looking out for your best interests’ sister, grumpy pants Bud, and jabber jaws Coyote had trusted us enough to fix everything. But you ambushed us separately and played against our dependency on each other. Because you knew we wouldn’t leave the other behind.” Grace stands with indignation, can imagine the steam pouring from her ears like those cartoons the girls watched on Saturday mornings when they were little. 

“And I won’t leave you behind either. Or alone on this. As mad as I am at you, for reasons not solely related to this company, you’re my daughter and I won’t let you fail. Get your shit together and realign your attitude. I’ll be by tomorrow to continue on with…” Grace gestures at the piled up conference table. “This.”

She turns and walks out, not even waiting to see Brianna’s reaction or to hear a rebuttal. It’s only when she reaches her car that she lets out a breath she didn’t realize she had been holding. 

* * *

Dinner consists of more liquid sustenance than solids. Grace manages to take a few bites of the kale salad before throwing in the towel and nursing her martini for longer than usual.

Quick drinking won’t do tonight, the events of the day repeating at an annoyingly leisurely pace in her mind. The moments with Brianna sting and ache a little too strongly and now anytime Frankie is around, the probability of the proposition hangs ever present. She holds the glass onto her forehead, the cold helping to numb a little bit of everything. 

“Did it really go that badly with Brianna?” Frankie says, slicing through the silence. While Grace would rather not talk about it, about anything, she knows better than to assume she can dodge this with ignorance. 

“We both resent each other for trying to help one another out,” Grace concedes, answers honestly. “She doesn’t feel like she needs me even though she hasn’t a clue how to dig herself out from the hole she’s in.”

Grace stops, thinks of what she’s just said. Yeah, sounds about the same as her and the house. It all hits her like a ton of bricks. 

“Which I guess is the same for me and how I was after the contractor ripped me off and I fucked things up completely.” She gets quiet and feels the tears start to well up. “I’m the reason we ended up in that assisted living nightmare.” 

A truth that she has held onto for the last five months but never spoke aloud to Frankie. The guilt has been so heavy to carry and shoving it off, out into the open, relieves some of the burden of berating herself over and over again.

Before she can process what’s happening, Frankie has wrapped herself around Grace and is holding her together. She grips her tightly and is buried beneath a plethora of different brightly colored fabrics and beads. Instead of feeling smothered, Grace feels safe and like the parts in danger of crumbling and falling away may actually stay attached. 

“We are home. That’s all that matters. Don’t beat yourself up over stuff from the past,” Frankie soothes. Her fingers run through Grace’s hair and she closes her eyes against the sensation. Steadies her breathing. 

“I’m good at that though,” she finally sighs. 

“Well, stop. You can’t change that any more than I can change what happened with the baby…” Frankie trails off and gets a distant look. She shakes her head as if to dislodge the thought and sits down again beside Grace. Her hand reestablishes touch to Grace’s thigh, just above her knee, and remains there for the duration of their silent meal. 

When the lack of sound becomes awkward and almost too much to bear, Grace excuses herself for the night. She isn’t much up to whatever Frankie has planned for the rest of the evening, despite the comfort she had offered earlier. Between the argument with Brianna, the nagging pull of their business conversation, and the proposition, a little peace and quiet seems like a much needed reprieve from the barrage of activity going on lately in both of their lives. 

So bidding Frankie goodnight, Grace finds her way to her room. Her bathroom is back in order, more or less, after having a giant part of it fall through the roof below her. It’s good to have this again, to regain some semblance of normalcy after being displaced and feeling out of sorts for the last five months. 

She lets herself indulge in a tub bath that soaks her to the core, loosens her tired muscles and tries to still her mind with the filtering in of heated steam. Idly, she wishes that the hot water could wash away all that feels foreign in her, that she could send it down the drain and into somewhere else. That it would be gone from her being and she could move on or go back to the way things were, before. 

After the water begins to cool, she takes her time with the routine before bed. She stays undressed a little longer than normal, opening the windows and letting the air hit her skin. Freedom is a cherished thing now and she lets her inhibitions go, not worried about hiding her body away from the world. It’s not as if anyone is looking at her. Or wanting to look at her. 

Slamming into her like a tidal wave, the words careen back to her from a few weeks ago. About what Frankie had said. Suddenly, she is reminded that Frankie has seen some of her body, has asked to see more of it, to learn it, and the thought sends shivers up and down her spine. For some reason, this makes her hurry her movements and cover what only moments ago had felt so good to show.

Once she’s dressed, she looks in the mirror and barely recognizes herself. Who she has been and who she has become are beginning to be more spaced out, a gaping chasm between the two beings. She can’t dislodge thinking about what Frankie has offered, ever it seems, and maybe it’s for that reason she finds herself opening her laptop. 

It’s this that has to be moving her fingers, has to be making her type the words she is typing. A banal curiosity, she lets herself believe. And when she starts to scroll through the pictures, maybe that’s what it is. At first. Until it isn’t. Until she is absently letting those lead to another website that has videos to which she pushes play. The images move and she finds her breathing becoming shallow, an effect that does not occur simply from doing research. Which is what this had started out as. 

But now,  _ geez _ , now. There’s a throbbing in her low and she’s felt this too, much too often lately. Watching the images move in front of her, she feels scandalous, brazen. Like the type of woman who would swear to it that she’d never done something like this, for the sake of pleasure and release. But now it’s all consuming and she wants to let her hand disconnect from the touch pad and touch somewhere else. 

With every passing moment, it becomes harder to contain the urge and she has to keep telling herself no, has to keep repeating the mantra “you will not masturbate to female on female porn while thinking about what your best friend would look like in that exact position on the screen.”

_ Dear God _ , Grace finally thinks, realizes.  _ I’m going to do it. I’m going to be the one to cave. _ She knows now, more clearer in this moment than anything, that she is going to be the one to fold and ask for this crazy thing that has been looming between them. This thing that is bigger than metaphorical elephants. This thing that she shouldn’t desire, but the mere insinuation of possibility sends her afire. 

She’s going to ask for it and be scared shitless, but curiosity is propelling her heart and body full steam ahead, an un-piloted engine that will surely derail and crash violently eventually. 

When Frankie mentioned it, Grace’s heart had fluttered from anticipation and nervousness. That’s all it remained though, a mention, almost casual. Like dipping your toes into water to test the temperature before you take the plunge. And despite herself, she keeps on imagining what it’s going to be like. What it will feel like to gain the courage to power forward with this whole crazy idea. 

The video in front of her doesn’t hurt either and at a particular sensual scene, Grace lets out a whimper. It bounces off the walls in an echo, one she can hear reverberating back to her ears. This causes her to slam the laptop lid down, erasing the imagery momentarily, but still feeling it’s effects deep below. 

She goes to bed feeling flayed open and raw, knowing that there’s no turning back.


	4. The Initiation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Had to do a screen name change for...reasons. Still me, still writing, still updating.

The thoughts toss and turn in her mind and before long, the clock burns with the red digits, signaling an hour Grace isn’t sure she’s seen in years due to prescription sleep aid help. Why isn’t Frankie the one agonizing like she is? Of all the people to be consumed by something, Grace usually isn’t one of them. She doesn’t lose sleep over things because they’re controllable, able to be bent with will. This is something else entirely.

Which is why, she can’t believe it, her body revolts and lifts her from the sanctuary of her covers. Is propelled down the stairs, somewhat gingerly because of the recovering knee with its tinges here and there, toward the studio where she sees a faint light shining. She has no idea what she’s going to do when she sees Frankie, doesn’t know how to begin whatever it is she’s agreeing to only in action, not vocalization.

As she makes her way, she wishes she could tamp down the urge to somewhere darker where it would never see the light of day. It’s as if she’s been stripped down though, remade into something else wholly by the sheer magnitude of all that is Frankie.

It’s no longer about independence and freedom. It’s about togetherness and establishing a thing that she already wants to revisit over and over again even though nothing has happened. She wants them both to create something to where she can live inside of it and be fearless and audacious and every other thing she hasn’t been over the last two years. Everything started to change and she wasn’t herself anymore, just a person who looked to be an image of similarity but really wasn’t below the surface.

Blame is too strong a word to assign to what’s happened. She doesn’t blame Frankie for this. It’s as much her own fault as anyone’s. Allow doesn’t really fit either. What has happened between the two of them has been weirdly organic, moving from not even wanting to be in the same room as Frankie to not wanting to be anywhere without her.

When Grace reaches the studio, she hesitates. Her hand remains frozen near the knob. The unknown beats so hard within her, she almost turns around and goes back to the main house. Letting out a shuddering breath, she decides to move.

Slowly she opens the door and finds the illumination made from a standing lamp in the corner of the room. Frankie lies on the couch, head propped up by a pillow and knees bent toward her chest, a magazine resting.

Upon hearing Grace enter, she turns and stares, not speaking for a few moments. Grace remains stoic, immobile, unsure how to proceed.

“It’s three in the morning,” Frankie points out. Like it isn’t fucking obvious. Like reason and thought went into what may or may not be about to happen.

To Grace, it seems like the best time for diving. Darkness can act as a shield, a coverlet to keep them from being exposed and gaping. In this hour, she can do things she wouldn’t in the light of day and maybe assuage guilt to only a pin prick within her being.

As she moves closer to Frankie, she still doesn’t speak. She doesn’t fill the air with sound, even though she’s sure her heart is going to jackhammer out of her chest cavity. Eyes follow her, like a predator watching prey, and it fills Grace with a sense of excitement. They continue to trace her movements as she pushes her robe with shaking fingers back from her shoulders and lets it flutter to the ground.

Now all that remains is the silk slip of the gown she has worn to bed. Not the peach one with lace, like she wore for Nick. To use it again seemed an act of treason, somehow degrading what she’s told herself she’s about to do to a mere fling, a need to seek physicality just because. Frankie is and always will be anything but.

Grace watches as Frankie stands, moves toward within inches of her body. She doesn’t touch though, almost as if she’s unsure that what’s she’s seeing is real. _I’m not a dream_ , Grace wants to murmur, but can’t find it in herself to say. Instead, she lets a hand extend and trace, learning the contours and bends of Frankie’s shoulder and neck and face.

And so it begins. It’s not clear which one initiates first. Just like that, the proposition morphs into agreement with their lips meeting in a clumsy, sloppy, and rough kiss.

First kisses are usually savored and remembered for tenderness.  This is not tentative like she’d imagined, the complete opposite of expectation. She’s rougher than she thought she’d be, more impatient to claim. Like she’s not getting enough at the rate it’s being given. Frankie meets her and deposits just as much fervour into her actions as Grace who finds herself grabbing and grasping at Frankie, pulling and tugging at clothing, raking against skin.

It shouldn’t feel like being watered after a drought. Somehow though, her whole life has become that in this instance. Robert, Guy, Nick, even Phil...they all become fallout.

She’s never been with a woman, only thought about it errantly in the past. However this doesn’t feel as strange as it should, almost halfway right as she feels the black strap of her gown fall. Not much is exposed, just an expanse of her body from shoulder to the swell of breast. The way Frankie looks at her makes a throb echo low in her. _Oh_.

“Grace, are you sure?” Frankie searches.

Grace wants her to only find tonight, whatever it is they’re both seeking. To be at this age and likely be following a path where neither of them will know the touch of another hand other than their own or each other’s.

This past year has been about that it seems. Resolution becomes the theme of their time now: resolving to find another place to live, resolving to stop looking for what might never show up, resolving to let each other be what they might never take from someone else again.

They have given up partners for each other. Both have sacrificed their freedom to not leave the other behind and alone. They’ve found a life again together from ruins. Why can’t this be as beautiful in its nonsensical existence?

“Show me what to do,” Grace hears herself say. Almost as if someone else were speaking the words. Embarrassment ebbs and honesty flows. “I’m not sure what to do.”

“I don’t know exactly either,” Frankie answers, admits while delicately letting the other strap of Grace’s gown retreat southward.

The top dangles now, barely hanging on from gravitational pull. One shrug of Grace’s shoulders and it’s gone. But Frankie stands completely covered and that simply won’t do. So being bold, Grace begins to whittle and chip away too.

She’s undressed people before but only men. Being with Frankie now seems to require more finesse. A different approach completely is going to have to dictate tonight. Everything Grace has in her repertoire is absolutely useless, even the abrupt research from a few nights ago. Or is it?

Pleasuring herself has been part of her life for the last few years, ever since they launched Vybrant together. It can’t be that much different than what she likes, can it? It seems as good a place to start as any, using her experience with her own body to act as the reins so to speak.

Letting her fingers shove Frankie’s rust colored cotton house coat off, she comes face to face with an Eric Clapton tee shirt and feels herself shake her head.

“I wasn’t exactly planning on entertaining tonight,” Frankie grouses at Grace’s silent critique. As if to hammer home the sentiment that Grace shouldn’t have criticized, she leans in and connects her lips to the dip of Grace’s neck and shoulder, roughly kissing and then alternating to sucking.

“Oh my, God,” slips out of Grace before she can stop herself. She can’t move her head, can’t really see what Frankie is doing with her mouth, but it feels heavenly. The utterance moves out of her again when slender digits rake across the expanse of her chest, across the fabric clinging to her barely.

Fingers trace her nipples, raising them with electric sensation and Grace tries to shove aside the screaming reminder that it’s Frankie touching her, her best friend whose relationship with her has been muddled a little bit as of late, but still her _friend._

She feels herself backing Frankie toward the sofa behind them, letting her own hand roam up and down the expanse of Frankie’s back and coming to glide across her backside before they both come to rest side by side on the piece of furniture. Emboldened by a mixture of fear and anticipation and need, Grace shoves her hand up under Frankie’s T-shirt and connects with skin for the first time, gasping.

 _Yeah, friends don’t do this with each other_ , Grace  chastises internally, until Frankie shoves her back against the pillow she’d been propped on earlier. She’s on top of Grace and has a wild look in her eyes, another mishmash of emotions Grace can’t begin to categorize. Then, like ripping off a band-aid, her hand is under Grace’s gown and shoving it halfway up her hips.

Frankie comes to rest squarely on Grace’s body, leaving Grace’s knees wrapped precariously around the woman in front of her. This isn’t something she can keep up, her knee surgery looming like an angry smear of comprehension in the back of her mind. When Frankie’s hand skitters up the inside of her thighs, touches the flesh just to the left and right of the boundary set by her undergarments, the thought of her blasted knee goes out the window.  

Shoving her hand up higher, she connects with Frankie’s bare breast and lets her hand do what Frankie had done through the fabric of Grace’s gown earlier. The fact that they’re rushing, that this isn’t how a first time should happen, that they’re in their _seventies_ for god’s sake, isn’t lost on her.

If good judgement and sound reasoning were a part of any of this though, this probably wouldn’t be happening. Taking time to analyze the why’s and why not’s is something that fell by the wayside once she made the journey to the studio.

The deft hand beneath her gown is now raking across a thin layer of fabric, something Grace knows is probably too risqué for her age to be wearing but that makes her feel sensual and beautiful. Why should that feeling be confined to women in their youth? Why should she all but fall dormant just because social convention dictates that sensuality and sexuality are tied to women with smooth skin and years not stacked against them?

She can want this without feeling guilty, right? She and Frankie can create this out of necessity, a combat against time, a rally to prove that just because they have less years left than more, that vibrancy can still exist.

 _I’ve got to make this good, memorable, worth every question either of us has ever asked_ , runs rampant in Grace’s mind as she curls her legs around Frankie’s posterior, bringing their hips more in tandem with one another. Fuck, yeah. That’s the feeling she’s been seeking as the movement brings Frankie’s hand flush against her, wedged between their bodies.

Above her, Frankie is panting and bleary eyed, Grace’s hand still on her naked breasts beneath her shirt. She begins to circle and press, rake and pinch as she makes her mouth connect to the side of Frankie’s neck.

“Ahhh,” purrs from Frankie, her eyes closed. But then suddenly they open again and she seizes her own movements to Grace.

“What? What?” Grace panics, leans forward a bit. That’s when she feels her knee that’s barely been cooperating flare with pain. “Son of a…”

“What is it, Grace? Are you okay?” Frankie mirrors back concern.

“My knee,” is the embarrassing answer, to which Frankie simultaneously answers, “My back.”

What the actual…

They’re both still glued to one another, completely immobile and this isn’t like the last time when they were on top of each other on the floor. They absolutely can’t call Robert or Sol, the kids a foregone conclusion that makes her think she’d rather die like this than ever ask for their help or advice again.

How fitting, for all of them to find the two of them like this, so close to bliss but tragically stopped from a reminder of the limitations of their years.

Frankie’s face comes to rest in the crook of Grace’s shoulder, her hands balancing her body on either of Grace’s own form.

Gingerly moving her leg a different way, Grace kisses the top of Frankie’s head after raking strands of rogue hair away, feeling disappointment and arousal lap gently at her still, one growing stronger by degrees, the other ebbing to a place no longer in reach.


	5. The Do-Over

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Rating going up because the rest of the chapters are about to get super risque.

Bringing up a failed attempt at sex isn’t something Grace is ready to breach. Now, eight hours later, the cluster minus the fuck burns like white hot fire inside of her. She’s been a planner all of her life, has never really failed at anything. (Except Robert, but is that really _her_ fault? Well, and the house. Damnit.) How she and Frankie managed to totally screw up their first encounter seems a bit like a fluke.

Frankie knows Grace better than herself most times and she is pretty sure she has Frankie pegged as well. Maybe inexperience and anxiety are partly to blame, but the outcome seemed to have had a better ending in Grace’s mind. Not finishing with them both panting and out of breath, Frankie lying prostrate on top of her with a hand under her gown and Grace still holding onto Frankie’s bare breast, feeling her knee burn in agony.

Fuck, it had been messy. And not in the completely fun way that ends with both people having mind-blowing orgasms. Granted it hadn’t all been muddled. Flashes of brilliance and rawness go through Grace and she feels herself ache a little below. Behind her, Frankie enters the kitchen and she has to cross her legs and will her emotions to stay in check, her face to remain impassive.

“Morning,” isn’t offered with Frankie’s usual gusto. The words form and drop more like a cat spooked and wary of what to expect.

Not that Grace has any better idea or modicum of how to approach this. Last night was wonderful and mortifying all at the same time, yet she can barely think of specifics without wanting to peel her clothes off and offer herself completely to Frankie while sitting on the counter and tossing her head back in ecstasy.

Nope. Better leave that unsaid.

Coincidentally, Grace also wonders how she has gone from a completely heterosexual being to a woman craving nothing but the female form in a span of a month. While she attributes most of this to the woman in front of her sheepishly digging peanut butter out of the jar with a spoon, the other part knows that these feelings are probably more telling, repression hidden for too long. True self-floundering to survive in a world full of masculinity.

Tired of rigidity and conformity to norms, Grace is fed up with doing what she’s supposed to do, for the sake of appropriateness. And doing Frankie seems a good way to blast all that to smithereens.

“Morning,” leaves her lips but ends up hitting the air like a whiny and petulant child instead of a sensual adult wanting to beg for a do-over.

“We need to talk about what happened last night.”  The sentence catches Grace off guard and she snaps her head up from digging at the bowl of oatmeal in front of her like there’s unearthed treasure to be found in its depths.

 _No, too soon_. _Too soon_ , is all she can think. The only disconcerting thought rattling around in her brain is how Frankie is going to want to back peddle, forget this was even mentioned. Literally, anything else needs to happen right now, except for that.

Chalk it up to nerves or jitters or mortification, but discussing another failure on the growing list Grace has going isn’t something she feels like tackling this morning.

“I shouldn’t have…” spills out of her before she can think better or it, clamp down on her verbal filter and stop herself.

Frankie eyes her, almost with what Grace would classify as suspicion. She says nothing which is also oddly not her style either.

“I was lonely last night and I began thinking of what you’d said...earlier, and I guess I just didn’t work everything out to the end because I had no idea what I was doing or wanting.” Grace stops. No, that’s not right. “Well, I knew what I was wanting but…”

And that’s the last rambling that comes from her mouth as Frankie’s stifles the sound, connects them together in a move that transports Grace back to last night before everything became a mess of back and knee spasms and aches.

Her lips glide smoothly, softly over Grace’s in a gesture that all but confirms that Grace wasn’t crazy for wanting this, for needing this on some basic level. Frankie is an exercise in opposites, gentle and attentive when she needs to be, a smear of sensuality and vigor when called for.

Grace can have either of these Frankie’s, she’s realizing as they kiss and explore, hands beginning to roam and learn, to categorize and memorize. She can have this thing, blooming like a flower, anytime she wants if she just gets over herself and asks for it. Likewise could the person in front of her, if only she’d propel herself into action.

 _I’ll give her anything she wants_ , runs through Grace’s brain but is erased with the tentative flick of Frankie’s tongue against her own, a brush stroke on a yet to be painted canvas with booming potential.

The moment ends much too quickly for Grace as they disconnect. For someone who believes so strongly in cosmic alignment and compatibility, Frankie looks like she isn’t ready to concede last night as a failure either though, judging by the look on her face. And something else entirely is etched onto it as well.

“What happens if I do this? If we do this?” Frankie asks, eyes on Grace’s body instead of her face. She’s asking permission but her hands have already started to pull Grace’s shirt from her jeans. “I know I suggested this, but bloody hell. I’ve tried to not give in to it, even after I mentioned it.”

“Why?” Grace pants, reduced to a mushy teenager, inching closer so that Frankie’s hands on her torso can skirt higher.

“Isn’t it wrong to want this from you? You’re my best friend. I’m not supposed to crave you, Grace.” Her nose nuzzles in the crook of Grace’s neck, her hands ghosting across the nude colored bra holding Grace’s skin back from Frankie’s fingertips.

They’re not going to do this here, fuck in the kitchen. Because that’s what they’ve told each other this is, right? It’s a way to ease sexual tension to a slow burn, to chase away loneliness and abandonment. It’s not falling in love or making love or any of that hippie stuff Frankie subscribes to. It’s not soul mates or life partners or girlfriends or wives. It’s just plain _getting off._

At least that is what Grace has to tell herself as she feels Frankie’s other hand skillfully unbutton her jeans and dip below to find her already wetter than she would want to admit, more strung tight than an instrument should ever be. The image of wires snapping and creating a cacophony of sounds fills her mind.

If Grace wants to have some sort of dignity left to her, she has to get them somewhere else, out of view. This has to just be between them and four walls with no windows, where even the mere possibility of someone seeing them is nonexistent. Just as she feels Frankie’s index finger touch the outside of her, seeking entrance in, Grace gasps and yanks Frankie’s hand from its depths, dragging her into the hall and the nearby bathroom on their ground floor.

For what it lacks in romanticism, it makes up for in privacy which is what she wants now. The sentimentally can come later. All Grace wants to do is come now.

When the door closes, she pulls Frankie back into her, resting her back against the wood. Fingers curl into the fabric of Frankie’s loose leggings and Grace brings their bodies together. The hand that had gone exploring earlier is back on its trek again, past the popped button.

Too much energy is wiring Grace, adrenaline, and sexuality roaring through her veins. If they can figure this out, she’ll have time later to be gentle with Frankie, to learn her and what she likes or doesn’t. Keeping her hands out of her own pants, out of her own body has been an agonizing feat though and with Frankie offering to get this thing between them off the ground, patience is lacking.

Batting her hand away, Grace grabs the sides of her own jeans and inches them down her thighs, as Frankie’s eyes watch them glide lower. The absence of patience also makes her bypass the idea of leaving her panties in place for a bit of foreplay.

She reveals herself to Frankie completely, leaning back against the door, both hands going from her bottom half to her top, which she unbuttons swiftly and shrugs back behind her. At this rate, she’ll be nude before Frankie even loses an article of clothing, but somehow that doesn’t matter.

“Holy shit,” Frankie mumbles and all of the confidence she seemed to contain before recedes somewhere back inside of her.

“You’re trembling,” Grace notices, in awe. She lets her hand move over Frankie’s shoulder, down across her breasts, applying pressure to each rib she comes into contact with.

“You’re giving me good reason to.”

“It’s just me, Frankie. It’s just the two of us,” she tries to assure, bringing Frankie’s hand to her heart. It gives them a speck of who they really are inside of this moment that doesn’t quite seem like reality.

“That’s why this matters so much more than anything. Than everything,” Frankie whispers with eyes closed.

Grace thinks her heart might burst into at Frankie’s words and the look on her face. She’s misjudged a lot in the past few months and being so bold in getting this far knocks back at her with guilt. She’s always been bad at controlling things that she’s been unsure of, so much easier to let go with a frivolous abandon when it gets to be too much.

Like this.

The mood seems to have shifted inside the space they’re in, but just as Grace bends down to replace her clothes to where they go, Frankie’s hand is back on her, thumb pressing into her clit and shoving her against the door. Her other hand holds Grace tightly and removes the straps of the bra from her shoulders, pulling the cups down one after the other and placing a rough lick across the surface of each nipple now standing at attention in the air.

In a state suspended between bliss and frustration, Grace moans while tossing her head back into the door. Blindly, she tries to feel her way to start giving Frankie back some of what she’s receiving but is pinned tighter no matter which direction she tries to move. Frankie’s pace between them has sped up and Grace wants to find it in herself to protest. After all, wasn’t this supposed to be about mutual pleasure?

“Let me do this for you. Let me get you off,” Frankie answers against a squirm from Grace as if reading her mind telepathically.

Her pace is relentless down below and Grace feels the building up of pressure. She won’t last long at this rate. And she wants it to last.

Shifting her body, she manages to remove a little of the pressure Frankie is pouring into her. Manages to snake a hand between Frankie’s legs and feel heat radiate to her palm. This causes a cease of movements on Grace’s body as Frankie’s eyes go wide, like she can’t believe she got weaseled when she was trying so hard to not give in herself.

Grace refuses to be conquered on her own. It will not solely be her prize at the end of the day, to finally release the tension. At no juncture will she allow it to be her own guilt to wallow in, tossing and turning in her bed over whether they’ve made a grave mistake by crossing the line they’ve held to over the last four years. The one they’ve had established for over forty.

Pressure builds, like the water behind a dam waiting to flow freely. When Grace lets herself give in, it will all be over. No longer a mere insinuation or failed attempts, just fruition of something that has been shaped and growing for too incredibly long.

Frankie’s in front of her, brows knit together in concentration and eyes closed, just feeling. Grace’s own eyes aren’t going to stay open much longer because her orgasm is creeping and slithering closer with every nimble movement of Frankie’s fingers which Grace stares at in astonishment.

All of a sudden, Frankie surges forward and pins Grace to the door. The digits inside reach for even further depths while the other hand precariously moves to focus on a higher area of importance. Grace can’t withstand it any longer and the pulsing shoots through her like wildfire. Aflame and bright, she bites her lip to mask the wail of release so close to spilling over. Instead, Grace just feels.

Frankie looks in wonderment as she rides out the spasms, moves the hand on the upper portion of Grace to lightly grasp her neck and buries her face in blonde waves. Her fingers remain inside and Grace is starting to feel an all new ache, one that will grow uncomfortable soon if they don’t disconnect, despite her reluctance to move from the heat of Frankie’s form.

She reaches out and gently brushes a hand through Frankie’s hair, turns her gaze again to the hand wedged between their bodies. Gently, not wanting to offend, she takes her hand and slips it out from between her legs. Already, she misses it, feels like it’s the only place Frankie’s hand has ever belonged and the only place it needs to ever be again.

Grace knows Frankie has to be wound tight, but she isn’t seeking release. This whole damn thing has been a conundrum since Frankie brought it up. It was her idea to begin with but she didn’t initiate it. Now she’s turned a proposition to agreement to halfway fruition yet doesn’t seek the one thing this is all about. Is she scared? If so, why would she have said what she did, done what she did?

Grace makes another decision resolutely. Taking Frankie’s hand, she leads her to her meditation swing and makes her sit. Grabbing an oversized pillow, she plants herself in front of Frankie on the floor and stares her down. Frankie doesn’t question what’s happening, seems in awe of everything that has occurred.

As soon as Grace makes a move to rid Frankie of the clothing covering her bottom half, Frankie stills her with a hand and Grace can feel her heart in her throat. The look on her face is filled with a sense of guilt, disbelief, and resolve.

“Grace, what are you doing?” she asks softly, still holding her hand. Fingers dance lightly over Grace’s skin, an effort to calm, but it isn’t having its intended effect.

All that beats her inside her brain is the fact that they’ve stopped what they’re doing and if that happens too soon, clamming up and shutting down always happens as an inevitability. After the orgasm she just experienced, it would be such a travesty to have it stall out on the tracks right now.

“I’m trying to take care of you too,” Grace answers, scared out of her mind to even be entertaining this crazy idea of being the first one to please the other orally. But she’ll do it. God, will she do it if it means this all continues and she can have Frankie the way she now knows she absolutely wants her now.

“You don’t have to.”

“I want to. Please,” she begs. Not above doing so. She doesn’t want tomorrow to rise on the horizon and the only one that benefited was herself.

“We can wait, Grace. Don’t get me wrong, I’d love whatever you do. But this is a lot. A lot, a lot.”

“And what you just did to me wasn’t?” Grace croaks out, feeling herself getting borderline hysterical. If Frankie backs away from this, if she is spazzing out after giving Grace a fantastic orgasm…

“I…” Frankie begins but doesn’t get to finish because bursting through the door is Bud and a screaming Faith.

“Mom? Mom...oh, there you are,” Bud says, but then a funny look passes over his face when he sees Frankie in her meditation swing and Grace on a pillow on the floor in front of her. “Is this some sort of weird seance?”

Her cheeks must be ten shades of crimson because she realizes her hands are resting on top of Frankie’s thighs, precariously close to other parts of her body. While not 100% scandalous, it doesn’t look entirely innocent either. Grace wants to tell Frankie to get up, go take her upset granddaughter from the carrier Bud is holding, but her mouth isn’t working the best either, a casualty of arousal and orgasm.

She taps Frankie’s thigh and motions with her head. With a jerk, Frankie snaps out of her daze and regains her wits. She shoves past Grace and quickly makes her way over, removing Faith from the carrier and cooing to sooth the aggravated tot.

The child is pacified almost instantly and Grace feels her heart expand, a counterbalance to the other emotions that just ran rampant in her body.

For four years, she’s tried to mollify what she’s felt. To feel something growing and taking root but not exactly knowing what it was, toward Frankie and their life together. This feels like another tendril sticking into the earth and becoming more immovable as time goes on. To classify it seems dangerous, especially when they’ve just agreed to this. It’s supposed to be physicality only. Emotions are supposed to be kept at bay.

“She’d been crying nonstop for over an hour. I’ve fed her, changed her diaper, given her gas drops, rocked her. She acts restless. Allison is out running errands so I was on Dad duty and nothing I did worked,” Bud bemoans, scratching his head and wearing a frazzled countenance.

“Babies can pick up on emotions. If you’re the least bit stressed, Faith could sense that. She’s noticing the disharmony within yourself,” Frankie explains, bouncing the little girl and making baby noises intermittently.

Grace comes to stand by Frankie, encouraging Faith to grab her fingers and latch on. She smiles a little and rubs her small back with the other hand. It feels more natural to interact with small children now, easier somehow knowing she isn’t responsible for something else’s joy for a prolonged period of time.

The thought stills her and she glances over at Frankie. Just seconds ago she was so close to trying exactly that, has been trying to for the last two years and maybe even longer. It’s a hard sensation to shake.

“Well, you two must be relaxed because the baby calmed immediately,” Bud offers and Grace wants to let out a choking noise but swallows it down.

She wonders if it’s possible to read a post orgasmic face like a storybook. The narrative of their life doesn’t need to be openly expressed so soon, not when they’ve just agreed to provide each other with sexual fulfillment. _Which is starting out like a fucking tennis match_ , Grace thinks. The back and forth volley between an awkward messiness and an incandescent consummation.

She needs to leave the two of them to catch up, needs an exit to regather her wits. The odd urge to reach over and kiss Frankie’s cheek in an act of domesticity and thanks for the fingering surfaces and recedes. Grace has never been the best at emotions, but the dueling of hers currently upends her.

Opting for something safe seems like the only way to go so with a soft touch to Frankie’s shoulder, a caress of Faith’s head, and a nod to Bud, she excuses herself to the solitude of her room. Maybe there, things will make more sense.


	6. The Fickleness of Emotion

“Sol and Robert are coming over tonight for dinner,” Frankie announces over a rather uninteresting piece of toast and cup of tea.

Grace, off in a daze, jerks her head up and makes a face. “Why on earth would they do that?”

Not that she hasn’t learned to appreciate her husband in a different context outside of their marriage. And for the most part, she’s learned to tolerate Sol.

The whole situation, regardless of time, sends a deluge of emotions twirling. Anger has morphed into irritation whenever she is unfortunately included in their lives, which even morphs itself sometimes into tolerance. The thought bubbles up of her comment, ‘dumb gay dads,’ and she internally scolds herself. No longer can she blame them for the ruins of a life, but for its wrecking and reshaping. If not for the kid’s dumb gay dads, she wouldn’t have Frankie between her legs and the realization that maybe now, she’s a dumb gay mom hits a little hard.

“Sol got invited to speak at some big conference where lawyers talk about...lawyer things. I’ll admit, I zoned out about halfway through, but he was all twitterpated telling me about it, so I agreed to host them,” she stops. “Plus Chili’s got me into trouble last time. Oh, by the way. What can you scrounge up by about six-fifteen tonight?”

“I’m not cooking for them!” Grace practically shouts in disbelief. “Part with one of your Cheeses of the World and Popcorn Ball of the Month subscription boxes to serve them.”

“Cheese and popcorn don’t go together, Grace!”

“Tell that to the people who put them in those cheap tin cans and dole them out to the public at Christmas,” she answers dryly. She clears her plate and coffee cup from the counter, depositing it in the sink. When she turns back around, Frankie is blocking her from leaving.

“You’d think you’d be a bit more…” Frankie lets her fingers curl and wrap around the collar of Grace’s shirt. “Agreeable. After yesterday.”

“Are you seriously suggesting I _owe_ you? You kissed me. You’re the one who wouldn’t let me…” Suddenly her tongue goes shy which is utterly ridiculous considering she disrobed herself in front of Frankie yesterday. But this doesn’t need to be a score thing, a tit for tat as it were.

“Aren’t you glad I didn’t though? What, with Bud walking in and all,” Frankie gestures, a flurry of hand motions. “Not something my granddaughter really needs to learn about just yet. She can save that for her confusing high school and college years.”

“Not high school. Definitely not high school,” Grace shakes her head. But then again, how much easier would this be between her and Frankie if she’d listened to that nagging little voice that’s been present in her head for as long as she can remember? Maybe if she’d listened to herself at any point over the last fifty years...

“Not everyone is a late bloomer, Grace,” Frankie says in what seems like a thinly veiled reference to the two of them. Grace blanches at the thought, a little irritation swirling as well. Apparently, Robert and Sol aren’t the only thing she can get worked up about today.

A change of topic desperately needs to occur, the back and forth between their ex’s, Frankie’s child and his offspring, and their newfound intimacy too much to combat all at once.

Grace clears her throat. “Speaking of late bloomers…” The segue a perfect transition, “...what exactly are you expecting out of this dinner with our no longer husbands?”

Frankie shrugs, bounces from one foot to the other. “We shoot the shit, act like we are 100% supportive of Sol’s thingy-majig,  and then we boot them out and enjoy a little bit of alone time.”

Grace steadies herself on the wood grain counter and stares at her hands, palms splayed and pressing hard. Weeks, she’s had. Weeks to get used to the idea of establishing a physical relationship with Frankie and yet the getting used to it is requiring more than she thought.

“Tonight,” Grace says, her word loaded with more than one possible meaning. Frankie moves to where Grace is standing, deposits a chaste kiss to her cheek, and disappears out the door toward her studio. Grace wills the next hours to speed by, a thing she should not want in her waning years. The prospect of touch beats within her with every pump of her heart.

************************

“And it’s in Philadelphia in two weeks and Robert decided to take some time off to accompany me. It’ll be nice to get out of town and enjoy talking to other fellow lawyers. It’s a very demanding profession, as you both know. I’m liking only doing a case here and there now. Retirement just wasn’t for me, especially since Robert is still plugging away,” Sol explains.

While she knew the Bergsteins had a penchant for long, drawn-out stories, the pace at which Sol meanders through one is excruciating. Glancing in Frankie’s direction, she seems jovial enough to humor him and his excitement, but she’s had more practice. Robert, on the other hand, looks more empathic of Grace’s emotion: severe boredom.

Swirling the vodka around in her martini glass proves more entertaining than listening to anything Sol has to say. It’s an effect of their nonplussing admission that he and Robert were lovers. Everything else piles up as detritus.

Waiting for an in, which rarely ever occurs but finally, mercifully does, she rises from the table with her glass. “I, uh, need a top off. Anyone else?” She barely waits for the three shakes of heads before disappearing into the kitchen.

Vegetable and fruit trays line the counter, looking much like the afterthought they were. She’d picked them up at the market, doing the bare minimum to appease Frankie for the together time she insisted upon having with their ex’s. The martini shaker sits off to the side and she grabs it, opening the lid to see how much of the contents have been consumed.

“Thanks for entertaining tonight,” a voice calls and Grace spins to see Robert standing in the open double doors leading to the deck area. He throws her a small smile and makes his way to stand beside her.

“To any other person, that might sound sincere, but I’ve had forty years of detecting your subtle sarcasm,” Grace says with a roll of her eyes. She grabs the vodka bottle from its perch and begins to make her go-to concoction.

“So it was Frankie’s idea, I take it?” he questions.

“She’s all about hanging stuff over my head, like a little cloud filled with lightning and bullshit.”

“Oh? And what does she have to hang over your head?”

Grace stills, tries not to drop the bottle in her hands on the floor. She’s divulged too much and she hasn’t even been specific.

“It’s nothing,” Grace waves off, goes to retrieve the olives from the fridge.

“So much so that it’s got you clammed up?”

 _Damn_. Does everything have to be a double entendre now? Grace wants to laugh at the ridiculous nature of this whole ordeal but can’t muster the willpower.

“You might say that,” Grace mutters.

“I hope you two work through whatever it is then. The situation with Sol didn’t go down as I had planned…” Robert begins, and Grace wants to choke at his word choice. “...but I’m honestly thrilled that you and Frankie have learned to not only work together but have developed a true friendship. It does a heart good to see.”

She’s thinking of boats, ones docked in harbors that stay connected to land because of giant, heavy-duty ropes. She’d compared her relationship to Frankie as being tethered, no choice in the matter except having to hang on out of necessity. A stationary craft doomed on dependency, never allowed to be free completely.

Now she is throwing her rope to Frankie’s dock, asking to rest in the harbor. To let the water lap against her and make a home out of it. Mere months ago she had been complaining to Robert about this very thing and now its all she can imagine wanting. How can she explain to him that there’s nothing inherently wrong except that she’s _doing things_ with his husband’s ex? Which should probably be a problem and will morph into a colossal one eventually. Right now though, it feels uncharacteristically good to be a thrumming ball of arousal.

“Yeah,” Grace says, devoid of words. She’s only got feelings now, no explanations for them. They exist almost in spite of her. Somehow, discussing them seems too dangerous to voice.

*********************************

After the meal, the night doesn’t create a balm for anything. Grace had hoped that retreating to her room would be the re-set she needed, would calm the uneasiness within her over everything that’s happened. Or hasn’t.

It had been difficult to avoid Frankie’s questioning look, ignore her suggestion of enjoying one another when Robert and Sol had gone home. Like her past relationships, she’d played the tired card, needing a second to breathe even though she felt wired throughout her body.  

Unlike those other relationships, none of them have gone like this. Did she ever feel this wild abandon with any of the men in her life? She can’t remember one.

A part of her feels ridiculous gazing out toward the studio. Like she’s spying on Frankie even though she can’t physically see her.

Before parting, they’d agreed to meet in the morning, not super early per Frankie’s request, to start filling orders for Vybrant again. The business took a hit when they were stuffed away in the retirement home, only getting worked on when Grace could sneak a few seconds to slap some labels on and dodge Invisalign woman. Frankie hadn’t even tried to help her, seeming to have lost all interest in the company she was a partial owner of.

Grace hadn’t necessarily minded the lack of dedication. After all, it wasn’t so far removed from the normal behavior of her business partner. Now though, they’re back into the fold and as she adjusts herself under the covers, she wonders how she is going to make it through tomorrow. They haven’t worked together since they started their agreement and spending hours boxing vibrators with a woman she wants to be permanently naked lately will be an exercise in control, something Grace has become exceedingly bad at.

The reminder of their tryst, like always, sends a beating between her thighs. They almost quake in remembrance and sweet agony. Since this whole thing has begun, she’s tried to keep her hands to herself and her vibrator stashed away. Knows that if she holds out long enough, her reward will be tenfold when they fuck the daylights out of each in some new, preposterous way.

It takes every bit of willpower to not bring her fingers to rub herself through her pajama bottoms, even having to bring her hands to tuck under her pillow and head. She has to behave herself in order to be ready for what will inevitably be given.

Her lips curl into a smile at the thought, a decadent thought twirling around in her brain, but she also has to pray that her dreams will behave themselves tonight. Somewhere between it all, she loses the battle with consciousness and awakens to the smell of brewing coffee and thumping.

Groggily, she reaches for her phone on the nightstand and looks at the time: 6:10 in the morning. Turning to look at the window, she sees the pale markings of the day dawning with darkness losing its grip by the minutes. Still, the hour is early by their standards.

Foregoing makeup and getting dressed for the day, she does run a comb through her hair to tame it a bit in its revolt against not being pressed into a pillow anymore. Slowly, she makes her way downstairs even though she’d like to be twenty years younger so she could sprint to see what is going on.

Her jaw drops when she looks into the dining room and sees the mountain of boxes sitting around the table and on it. All are taped, labeled, and neatly in rows and columns and Grace’s heart swells. Frankie is bent over a sheet of paper, highlighter marking away and the lid perched between her lips as she chews on it now and again.

As if sensing Grace’s presence, she looks up and gives her a sheepish smile instead of any explanation of why she is doing what she’s doing. Grace goes to her side in a daze, walking slowly and taking it all in.

Frankie’s laptop has the client list and purchase order pulled up on the screen still, but she’s got the same, now highlighted copy in front of her. More labels sit in the printer waiting to be retrieved, but not many. Only a few boxes remain without adornment.

“What’s all this?” Grace asks, disbelieving.

Frankie stands upright and grimaces, no doubt in pain from the posture she has adopted while working. She stretches a bit, does a few yoga poses to limber her body up again while Grace watches and tries to keep her thoughts from going to the gutter.

“I know I haven’t been much help lately,” Frankie begins. Grace wants to tell her she’s been _plenty_ helpful in certain ways, but doesn’t because Frankie looks genuinely sorry for being a flake. “Between the crap hole our kids put us in, getting this place back, waiting for our lives to get back to normal…”

Grace would hardly call what they’re doing normal, but that would be semantics and Frankie has never been completely good at them.

“My heart just hasn’t been in it. I’m sorry,” she finishes. She reaches for Grace’s hand and squeezes it. “But what I have been into is you.”

And just like that, control is fucked. It’s bleating and completely lost in the woods while it’s ugly opposite, chaos, grins and clasps its hands together in impatience. She’s never been that great at flirting and really and it feels semi-irrelevant to do so when not doing it would wind up with the same outcome: her screaming out as she comes from whatever method Frankie has schemed.

 _Not today_ , she thinks.

She decides to be careless and a bit spontaneous. Grabbing Frankie, she leans in and kisses her slowly. A grin can’t help but find its way to her face as she winds her arms around the body in front of her.

“So,” Grace begins in a sonorous tone. “This you waking up early and doing work thing? It’s a huge turn on.”

“Me working is a panty dropper? I wasn’t sure I was even capable of getting you worked up after you refused me last night. I was worried you’d gone back on our agreement, ” Frankie says with raised eyebrows. “And if I’d known about this, I’d have shown up on time and done more work in the past.”

Laughing, Grace pushes against Frankie’s body, sending them into the edge of the table, her hands resting behind Frankie on top of the wood grain.

Not too long ago, they’d both been atop it trying to trap rodents scurrying around on the floor. Then, she had thought it such a waste of potential, having a bottle of vodka between her legs and Frankie’s hand through the belt loops of her pants. The vermin below had taken the edge off of the awareness Grace had of Frankie suspended above her but it seemed close to deja-vu. A version of a dirty dream she has come to learn she wanted with more ferocity than she gave herself credit for.

“Yes to your question,” Grace agrees. “And you’re all I can think about lately, so no. I haven’t gone back on our agreement.” She uses her hands to shove the items that are behind Frankie. Vibrators and boxes scatter as she rakes them off the table, presses roughly against Frankie until she is backpedaling up onto the surface. Her face holds confusion and excitement as she looks at Grace.

“Uh, not that I’m not in to this idea, but I need to remind you…” she points behind her. “Disk issue.”

Grace backs away and pulls up a chair from nearby. She sits in front of Frankie, bringing her hands to rest on her thighs. Looking up into her eyes, Grace spreads Frankie’s legs.

“I have no intention of hurting your back. Or any other part of you. In fact, I’m going to make you feel the exact opposite. Unfasten and get rid of these,” Grace commands and taps at Frankie’s overalls, an edge to her tone. It’s a little more forceful than intended, but she’s been imagining what Frankie tastes like and it’s too powerful to let go of. She doesn’t want to just wonder anymore. She wants to know. “I’ve been wanting to do this since the other night.” She sighs, thinks. “Since even longer than the other night.” It’s admission peels off of her and she feels lighter.

“Mmm, then I should do a little striptease. Get you really worked up,” Frankie says with a waggle of her eyebrows. She shimmies her shoulders and unbuckles first one side of the garment, then the other. The straps fall down with a thunk.

Grace leans back and puts her elbow on the arm of the chair, rests her face in her hand with an amused expression. This is new too. Another glorious gift that has been bestowed upon her.

Using a hand to brace herself, with the other Frankie removes the material, leaving her in her shirt and undergarments. Now it’s Grace’s turn to waggle her eyebrows a little bit. Nothing has been revealed that she couldn’t see on any other day normally. The shirt is long enough to cover what’s beneath and she can see a tank peeking out from under the button down.

“So many layers. What are you doing, creating a hibernation chamber on your own body?” Grace teases.

“I like an air of mystery to myself,” Frankie jokes back. As she says the words, she undoes a button, then another at an agonizingly slow pace. The tank is still blocking Grace’s view.

Frankie shrugs off the printed top finally, thankfully, and now what’s left is the basics of clothing plus the annoying tank top. Grace can feel her mouth water and hands become restless. She wants to scoot closer and start ripping everything off, but she’s somehow agreed to this strip show and its effect is definitely present.

Casting a watchful eye in Grace’s direction, Frankie suspends her movements and sends Grace a mischievous look. “Hmm, I’m feeling a sudden bout of modesty.”

“Need I remind you of our first meeting and you putting those out there on display,” Grace points, lets out a breath she didn’t realize she was holding. Foreplay has its merits, but this is not going fast enough for her liking. Furthermore, it’s been far too long since she’s seen Frankie on display and the anticipation is making her jittery.

“And why would I rush this? Giving you what you want right when you want it? Where’s the fun in it?”

“Because if this goes on any longer, I’ll make wish you’d never teased me,” Grace scoffs, then realizes what she’s divulged.

“Uh,” Frankie swallows. Something dark begins to cloud her eyes. “And how are you going to do _that_.”  She emphasizes the last word, emitting a challenge.

Scooting closer, she puts Frankie’s legs on either side of her. Gazing up into her eyes, Grace doesn’t even ask as she roughly grabs Frankie’s panties and yanks them down past her knees, rips them from her ankles. That tank, that blasted tank, remains and Grace reaches up to shove part of the material up past Frankie’s stomach, up past breasts that are revealed with glorious finality.

Her hands pull Frankie as far as she can get on the edge of the table without falling off. There, right above her, a part of Frankie’s body she absolutely has to touch before she moves on to the main attraction. Ready for later, Grace stands and puts her hands on the sides of small hips and leans in again.

Staring between their bodies, the rosy pink nipples peak much to Grace’s delight and she hasn’t even laid a finger on them yet. Or her mouth.

“Before I completely bury my face in your thighs, do you want to get the lube out of the fridge? Or would you like me to see how wet I can get you without it?” Grace challenges back.

She’s being brazen, unabashed. It’s the version of herself that she’s become since Frankie’s wild idea. Recognition of former self grows dimmer and dimmer, like a light bulb burning out. The old her is blinking away into nothing. The new is better anyway, so much more vibrant.

Her own thighs clench at her word choice. If she were younger, it would be coming a flood.

“Not that I don’t think I could rise to the occasion…” Frankie stops. “Maybe wrong word choice but while I think I could do a quite sufficient job with a little stimulation, I’d rather see your face covered in the things I created.”

“Oh, my God,” Grace moans, closing her eyes, willing herself not to come just from dirty talk. Frankie’s managed to bring her to the edge and tip her over it one singular time and she can’t regain anything resembling control now that it’s happened.

It’s not ceasing to amaze her what all they’re letting loose, how much they don’t even try to filter anymore. Originally, it’d been a shock value thing on Grace’s part, Frankie thinking her such a prude and incapable of the things she’s saying, what she’s doing. Now it’s the darkest parts of her being uncovered.

“Get the jar, now,” Grace grits out. Her fingers are going white from gripping the table. If she moves, if she doesn’t pull it together…

“You’ve kind of got me trapped here,” Frankie points out.

Grace manages to move her right hand from beside Frankie’s body and wills herself to breathe through her nose. Everything throbs. Everything is alive. Opening her eyes from being squeezed shut, she looks pleadingly at Frankie. “Please, hurry.”

She doesn’t watch Frankie disappear, can’t watch her near naked form walking away. Instead, she closes her eyes again and tries to think of anything else.

The breathing exercise is futile at this point, trying to close her eyes to avoid Frankie’s body. The imagery of it is now seared into her: the smoothness of her hips and thighs, the distinguishable bit of hair visible between her legs, nipples erect and anxious to be touched and played with. A scraping noise sounds and something touches her hand. Her eyes fly open and she works on the lid of the jar. Frankie goes back to her original spot, uses the seconds Grace is getting her shaking hands to open the jar to kiss along her throat.

“Fuck,” escapes Grace and she almost loses it, focusing so much on the sensation of Frankie’s lips on her throat. Her fingers dip into the lube jar, a cold shock to her skin. She gasps a little and begins to warm it up between her fingers. Kisses are still being peppered to her and she’s still thinking of Frankie naked and mostly exposed below her. “The tank has got to go and for future reference, never wear it again.”

Backing up enough to give Frankie space to remove it, she barely gives the other woman time to get it over her head before she is surging in and capturing her lips, bringing her long, lubed fingers to touch. Frankie is indeed ready for her but she will be a slippery mess that Grace can’t wait to get her mouth on after the addition she’s got coating her fingers.

She gently touches even though her heart is pounding in her throat and other parts of her body are screaming to be acknowledged. But she’s already gotten, already received, hasn’t she? The refusal from Frankie and the interruption stopped anything that might have transpired and it’s been replaying in Grace’s mind ever since.

“I never imagined wanting this so badly from you,” Frankie tells her as Grace’s fingers tease, then press with greater purpose.

“Oh yeah? How am I doing so far?” Grace replies, stroking at a quicker pace, one that certainly must feel good, but not one that will be beyond what Frankie can handle. Her mouth is being reserved for that specific task.

“Best damn decision I ever made, asking you to agree to this. You felt so perfect underneath my hands the other day. I wanted to let you return the favor, but then Bud walked in.”

“For the love of God, don’t mention your son right now. It’s not exactly the best aphrodisiac,” Grace huffs, circling down below.

She also figures that mentioning that she had to research how to do this before actually initiating it would also be another turn-off. Or then again, Frankie might appreciate that Grace consulted literature, skimmed photos, watched videos, all in an effort to know how to please a woman. Her past is filled with male genitalia, which she knows how to work with and manipulate. This needs to be better than the aloofness she’s adopted over the last few years.

“Oh, right. Would me saying I’ve touched myself to the thought of you in the past be a better thing to talk about? Because I have. Out in my studio.”

“When?” Grace hears herself ask, ever breaking apart and continuing to not be any form of herself. The old her would not have asked this. The one post-Frankie wants to know with a staggering clarity. “The first time you did, when was it?” She lets one of her fingers go inside now, tucking itself into a space that makes Grace sigh with radiating energy and Frankie’s head fall back.

“The night of the art show,” Frankie manages to get out and Grace gasps.

They’d walked out together, arm in arm. She’d opened the car door for Frankie, an act of chivalry if ever there was one, and driven them with Frankie’s energy buzzing all around. Once home, they’d ended the night with humor as light as their hearts and somehow, them sharing a chair with her arms wrapped around Frankie and feeling fuller than she had ever felt in her life. Then they’d parted ways with tentative “goodnights.” Only now, she’s learning that one of them never said goodnight at all. Frankie invited the conception of her, the idea of her being, into the room with her as she pleasured her body with the device they created together.

Grace runs her nose along the skin of Frankie’s collarbone and outward on her shoulder, leaning into her body as a moan escapes her traitorous mouth. The memory being brought forth of Frankie touching herself, to masturbating to _her_ , is almost enough to make her tighten with wonderous release.

Removing her fingers from the place she’s learning she never wants to leave is tough, but what she has planned next should dampen that particular desire. If only by a fraction. She focuses on every rattling sign of her arousal, trying to tame it for the next act: the thundering in her chest, the racehorse pace of her lungs, the twitch of her fingers to learn and discover more. Her tongue runs over her bottom lip, then turns to a bite. Anything to exercise restraint so she can make this good.

Bringing Frankie back to the edge of the table, she sits down again in the previously forgotten chair. Her eyes blur when she looks forward and sees the area her fingers were just occupying. It’s wet and beautiful and she can’t wait a second longer to answer a question she’s been asking herself on repeat recently. She scoots the chair closer, puts her feet under the table, and grabs both of Frankie’s hips before she leans forward, slides home.

It’s weird to be confirmed of expectation and surprised by it at the same time. The sensation of the act, of tasting, is not far removed from visions she’s had of it. What astonishes Grace is the feeling attached to it. Like being born again, cracked open and fresh. It’s just as good, if not better than anything she’s done in her past. The fact that Frankie is a woman, that’s she’s attaining this delicate and tremendous experience, races through her being.

Frankie’s hand wraps in her hair, immersing Grace into sensory overload as her hips shift further forward. It’s touch and taste and sound and sight, all working together to become. To create.

She lets these things dictate her movements, determining whether she lets her tongue press deeper or flatten to encompass. Whether her fingers run softly against the skin of Frankie’s thighs or grip with one and enter with the other.

Frankie’s above and around, but Grace is in and on. The prepositions deliver exodus from old and produce untrodden paths of inquiry. How will she respond with Grace’s tongue _on_ , what sound will she make when her hand goes _across_ her breast, how does her aura feel about Grace going _down_ ? Someday will Frankie be _between_ Grace’s legs again and their bodies, devoid of clothing, be _against_ one another?

It’s these diagrams with words Grace constructs within her mind to weave another story on the tapestry of life. When Frankie pulses and squeezes, announcing arrival, it’s here she whispers to herself, that she wants to rest her head for the remainder of her days.


	7. The Absence of Sanity

Mallory calls one afternoon just as she’s uncorked a bottle of her favorite sauvignon blanc, glass looking forlorn without any liquid swirling around. Grace watches her phone vibrate for a few seconds before finally picking up.

“What’s with you taking forever to answer your phone lately?” Mallory questions.

“I was, uh, washing my hair,” Grace says offhandedly. Not that latent irritation with the whole lot of them is why she doesn't rush to stop the phone from ringing. 

“At three in the afternoon?”

“It was very dirty,” Grace supplies.

“What could you have possibly done to make it that way?”

It’s a legitimate question because anyone who’s anyone knows Grace isn’t one to let something like that happen. Realistically speaking, every fiber of her being has been dirty lately. What she and Frankie are doing would shock even the kinkiest of people.

“So, how are the grandkids? I haven’t seen them in a week or so,” Grace tries to deflect.

“Alright, now I’m freaking out. You literally never ask about the kids. Are you okay? Do I need to come and get you to a hospital so they can check for signs of a stroke?”

“That’s not funny and you _know_ why,” Grace chastises. A sad and angry pang shoots through her chest. It’s a bitter memory. One she is constantly afraid of, even if she’s told no one.

“Look, I’m just worried about you is all. You’ve been staying to yourself lately and that isn’t really like you. Have you come into a new hobby or something?”

 _I’ve been doing a lot of coming latel_ y, she wants to say. To shout it from the rooftops. And maybe doing Frankie is a new hobby but it seems safer to not say anything like that at the risk of scarring her children for life.

Frankie walks into the living room from outside. She has been out in her studio for hours and even skipped lunch, saying she had a concept for a new painting she was going to try out. When she opens the door, she looks at Grace on the phone and tilts her head to the side, asking nonverbally who Grace is talking to.

“Look, I assure you. Everything is fine. I’m fine. I’m not alone. I’ve got Frankie here to drive me crazy and…” she stops a bit short of her final thought because Frankie has a hand held up making an oval shape to mimic a vagina and her other two fingers crudely making the motion of, well, what she’s very damn good at. Grace has to stifle a moan in remembrance.

“Frankie just walked in the door. I’ve got to go,” Grace huffs and hangs up, Mallory still spluttering at the brush off on the other line. She tosses her phone beside her on the couch and watches as Frankie makes her way toward where Grace is sitting.

“Well, that sounded like a fun conversation,” Frankie smiles. It’s that annoying kind, the one where she is congratulating herself for being crude enough that it distracts.

“Did you really need to make that gesture while I was on the phone? And to one of my children no less.”

“That’s what makes it hilarious,” Frankie begins. “Otherwise, what’s the point?”

“The point is, I almost let out an embarrassing noise at the thought of you doing that to me. And trust me, this is the last thing Mallory or any of the rest of our kids need to know about,” Grace says, mild panic rising in her at the thought. _Thank God they don’t_.  
  
“And would it be so damn bad if they did know? I mean, it’s not like they haven’t already gotten used to the idea of their parents banging other people. Of the same gender too.”

Grace can’t believe her ears. Is she really wanting Grace to out them to their families? They haven’t even had a serious talk about what it is they’re doing, only that they’re providing a little sexual stimulation to one another for the indefinite future.

“Are you out of your mind? There is no way on earth I am telling our kids anything. And even if I did, what would you have me say? ‘Oh, hey kids. Sales figures for Vybrant are looking up, your dad and Sol are as fucking annoying as ever and, speaking of fucking, Frankie and I have decided to touch and lick each other into frequent orgasms since we don’t have any men lined up to do it for us’.”

“Wow, you’re such an asshole sometimes. First of all, are you embarrassed by what we are doing? Because if you are, I can go back to giving myself some semblance of what I need with my Menage. Second, yeah. I have been touching you to the point of orgasm and I honestly think it’s one of the hottest things I ever have done. Watching you writhe and squirm right before you tip over the edge. And third, you know as well as I do that you nor I need a man to give us that. Fourth, fuck you very much,” Frankie says, the anger forming every one of her words as she makes her way through the monologue.

The response Grace is supposed to have is guilt, overwhelmingly so. Probably to the point where she doesn’t want to do anything but apologize. Seeing Frankie mad though? Oh, boy does she ever want to screw that out of her. It must show on her face because Frankie’s eyes go wide and she points a finger, stopping Grace from rising off of the couch to begin.

“No. Nuh-uh. You’re being a jerk and I will not give you what you want. You’ve lost any and all sexual acts by me to you for the day and for a time period which shall not be named,” Frankie tells her.

Grace looks at the outstretched finger that hasn’t retracted and stands, slowly ambling forward. Frankie backs up a little bit but not far enough. She uses this to her advantage, snatching hold of the digit and sucking it roughly into her mouth. The action echoes lower, painfully so, and Grace might as well give up here and now. She’ll say it, in front of anyone, that she doesn’t need a man or even want a man for the rest of her time breathing. It’s just Frankie and this insane, trippy feeling she gets that morphs her into this other Grace, a Grace who does off the wall shit all because it feels good and because she likes to get a reaction.

Frankie reels her finger back and clutches it to her chest, shaking her head. “Damn you, Grace Hanson. You think you can just sidestep this. Has it ever occurred to you that I’m perfectly fine doing this, doing you, for the rest of my life? Probably not, since you’re still thinking some overly heterosexual crap in that brain of yours even though your mouth…”

“Come off it, will you? You don’t want Bud and Coyote to know about this as much as I don’t want to tell Mallory and Brianna.” Grace feels her own irritation stirring, lumbering to life.

Frankie seems to take this into consideration and then shrugs nonchalantly. “I really wouldn’t care.”

“Seriously?” Grace finds that hard to believe.

“I guess there are worse things in life that my boys could experience other than their mom telling them she’s happy and it’s with you. I’d hope that would be all that matters to them.”

“Frankie…” Grace has to bite back her words as Frankie gestures to silence her. It settles in the room and becomes uneasy. This little cat fight seems to be hovering on a topic that is beyond what Grace has allowed herself to contemplate. “I’m sorry.” She says it even though she isn’t really sure what she’s apologizing for.

“I’m still pissed off at you because you overload your mouth way too much. I guess you’ll just have to do something to rearrange my chi,” Frankie says with a roll of her shoulders and she closes her eyes. Grace watches as she takes deep breaths and then opens her eyes, apparently more centered.

“How can I realign you with your normal level of energy?” Grace asks with an eye roll. Is halfway afraid of the answer.

“Take me to the one place where my soul feels at home,” Frankie offers simply.

Grace’s shoulders sag and she feels defeated by the words. She doesn’t need to query any further. She knows exactly where they’re going.

**********************

Honestly, when it really comes down to it, she hates it here. Hates the idea of anything that advertises itself as one genre and then in the same breath, offers a hamburger and fries to the meat and potatoes kind of people who don’t stick surfboards under their arms and say everything is “on fleek.” Or whatever the kids are saying these days.

But Grace isn’t sitting amongst a bunch of surfers, college kids, or midwestern transplants ordering less than standard fare at the Del Taco. Instead, she is between an old hippie that still seems baked from his time at Woodstock and her hippie of a roommate slash lover as the group chatters on about shit she isn’t really paying attention to. And likely never will. Something about the way the government is equipping squirrels with cameras to spy on the unsuspecting public, a story Grace has already heard entirely too much about anyway.

 _I can’t believe I’m doing all this just so I can get laid_ , she thinks to herself. Because holy shit, is she ever getting laid. It’s that thought she focuses on, on the past few weeks, as she twirls around the contents of her avocado veggie Fresca bowl instead of actually eating it. Frankie leans into her a bit and Grace thinks back to their experiences together so far. That alone is enough to make a dull ache start to beat between her legs.

She picks up bits and pieces of the chatter as Roberto transitions to the over the top new “dank spliff” he’s been partaking in lately. Frankie seems particularly interested, professing herself as a cannabis connoisseur. Grace is barely hanging on by a thread at this point, so she inserts a bit of snark to maybe steer the conversation closer to its culmination.

“Good thing we live in California or the government robot spy squirrels could be running drug bust operations for the ATF,” Grace murmurs in a sarcastic tone. It takes a second to realize that the noise around her has ceased, so she looks up from a particularly smushed piece of avocado to see the numerous sets of eyes all on her, staring.

She lets out a laugh, fake and nervous. Frankie grabs her by the elbow and starts pulling her out of the booth.

“Del Taco is an overwhelming experience, especially for a novice such as Grace. If you will excuse us for a few moments, we will be right back with all of you,” she smiles and starts to walk away. “Plus I want to know the name of your supplier, Roberto!”

They didn’t really talk about etiquette before they left the house, about how Grace was supposed to behave with Frankie’s group of people. In fact, she hadn’t wanted to come in the first place but then Frankie had waggled her eyebrows and said in a seductive tone that she would make it worth Grace’s while, which had sent her lower region throbbing at the suggestion.

Down a short hallway is the restroom, which she is yanked into with a sort of vehemence that can only bespeak of chastisement at popping off a comment in front of Frankie’s cool friends. A place Grace is learning she doesn’t fit into so well.

“Look, I was just joking around. Your drug usage or anyone else’s doesn’t bother me, obviously. Or your stories about government robot squirrels,” she almost whines out. Behind her, she hears the click of the lock on the door and spins around so fast, she almost loses her balance. Frankie’s got this look about her and Grace knows she’s up to no good. Slowly, she makes her way to Grace.

“What am I going to do with you and that smart mouth? It’s still working overtime,” she says, shaking her head.

Grace swallows a developing lump in her throat but then finds her voice. If they’re going to play this game…

“Maybe my smart mouth is exactly the reason why you’re interested in our whole agreement,” she shoots back, challenging Frankie to a rebuttal that really will make her shut the fuck up.

“Oh, ho. Look at you, with the witty comebacks today. You’re just full of sass and…” the sentence tapers off and Frankie is planting her fingers roughly into Grace’s hips.

“There’s so much more to me than that,” Grace shoots back, still barely hanging on, but for entirely different reasons now. She narrows her eyes at Frankie and Frankie does the same, daring her to say something else. Anything else. Sanity has left her in the last few weeks and so has decorum about their situation. It feels as if it clings to her like tar, incapable of being removed at all costs.

Frankie’s hands roughly shove her back into the sink and a gasp leaves Grace. She feels the button on her jeans pop open and the zipper sliding down quickly.

“You’re seriously not doing this here, right now…” but then a hand that had shoved her back into the sink is covering her mouth and the other has situated itself on her hip, is pulling down the layers as if they were never there to begin with.

“You have to be quiet,” Frankie commands. “Don’t say anything, don’t let a noise escape. Nothing, Grace.”

Before Grace can protest at the fucking absurdity of this all, Frankie has deposited Grace’s purse on the floor and puts her knees onto it for some kind of softness. Her hands peel the rest of Grace’s pants to her ankles and before Grace can say anything, exactly opposite of what she is told, Frankie’s tongue is buried inside of her folds and is lapping at her at a staggering pace.

“You’ve got to be fucking kidding me,” Grace gasps, for which she is reprimanded by a hard swipe of Frankie’s tongue against her and a rolling pinch to her clit that almost makes her cry out in pain and bliss.

The irony isn’t lost on her, getting eaten out at a place that seriously boasts a sticker on its front door that says “eating out is fun.” Another rough caress to the bundle of nerves and a swiping lick up her center. Yes, eating out is certainly fun but getting eaten? That takes the cake altogether.

They’re both so beyond ridiculous, resorting to fucking each other in a Del Taco bathroom because they can’t keep their hands or mouths or anything else to themselves anymore. Grace is uncovering a part of herself she never knew existed, a scandalous side that takes what it wants and lusts for things she hasn’t yet received. A part of her feels trashy but then Frankie’s tongue swipes up and down again, all she can do is throw her head back against the mirror, open her legs more to let Frankie bury herself between them, and chase the orgasm she feels on the brink.

She knows that Frankie needs to finish her off and quick, them being in a bathroom for God’s sake. Helping herself along doesn’t seem like the worst idea, so with the hands that have been gripping the edges of the porcelain sink, she uses one to weave through Frankie’s hair and brings the other down to herself to assist.

Everything heats up below and Grace ends up shoving Frankie’s face a little too forcefully into herself. She’d apologize if she wasn’t almost blacking out then practically seeing stars. But then, it ends and Frankie is on her feet and leaning into her, kissing along her jawline and using her left hand to open Grace’s blouse and expose a little bit of cleavage.

Before Grace can ask what she’s doing, why she’s stopped the glorious symphony below, she hears a slight buzzing sound and feels Frankie’s right hand go down her body and connect with the place she’s aching the most.

“I know it’s not ours but I didn’t think I could stuff the Ménage in a purse and be discreet. This will do for now, won’t it?” she whispers, kissing along Grace’s chest, peeling back more and more as if trying to get to a nipple that has its own unique kind of aching now too. The finger vibrator connects finally, thankfully to her clit and those stars she was seeing? It’s the whole freaking solar system now.

“You’re insane,” Grace mumbles through groans, thrusting her hips with vigor, chasing. Always chasing.

“Mmm, I guess you could say I’m committed,” Frankie answers, begins to circle and press with more vehemence.

Like a rubber band being snapped, Grace lets go. She was so frayed anyway but as usual, Frankie has managed to produce something in her that she hasn’t had from much of anyone else. She’s a nuclear reactor, a can of gasoline being thrown on a fire. Grace is nothing but what Frankie has turned her into since this all started, a connective tissue of nerves and emotions that get flicked on as fast as turning on a light switch.

She returns to her body, to her senses or what’s left of them, and opens her eyes to see Frankie looking like she is halfway between being sated by watching her get off and screaming because she didn’t get off. Before Grace can make her mouth move with any sort of coherence, Frankie bends down and pulls both her undergarment and pants back up to her hips, zips and buttons her back into place.

She smirks at Grace, a look that is maddeningly itching to wipe completely away from her face. Grace wants to do something, anything for payback, but then Frankie kisses her squarely. Her lips glide and she opens Grace up to where Grace can taste the remnants of herself that have been left behind.

A desolate moan escapes her, her eyes clamped shut and just feeling. With a whoosh, Grace senses the disconnect and the emptiness of not having Frankie pressed against her anymore. She opens her eyes and sees her undoing the lock, throwing a saucy wave in Grace’s direction before walking back toward her tablemates that have surely begun to question where the hell they both have disappeared to.

Before she can process what’s just happened, what they’ve just done, her cell sounds from the ground below and she bends quickly, making a disgusted face at the germs surely smeared everywhere on her handbag. But geez... She would sacrifice a thousand purses if it meant having Frankie’s mouth on her again.

 _Hope you enjoyed the attitude adjustment_ , the text reads. There’s a little heart emoji out beside it and Grace feels her own constrict within her chest.

This agreement was supposed to be about physicality and to some degree, companionship to stave off loneliness. As Grace tries to gather herself in the mirror she just had her head smashed against in ecstasy, she tries not to feel something more for Frankie than what they’ve consented to. A feat growing increasingly harder by the days.

*************************

Washing the Del Taco scent, among other things, from her body is another welcome sensation after a day filled with feeling. The events of earlier still sit oddly within, a melange of satisfaction and embarrassment. The fight leading up to the climax was certainly entertaining but the setting for it could have been better. It’s hard to rectify what she and Frankie are doing when nothing fits on one side of the other.

The candle flame flickers on the countertop of her bathroom sink and the water ripples as she rakes her hands through the liquid. The air is filled with the scent of gardenia and the bath bomb has almost fizzled out. She inhales and tries to calm her soul. It seems to stay abuzz these days, always is a state of chaos. While a part of her misses the calm, she will be the first to admit her life had become a bit mundane.

Somewhere between her thoughts, her eyes have drifted shut and when she hears the creak of the door, she opens them to see Frankie. She doesn’t tell her to go away or come in, knowing full well that Frankie will do whatever she wants, regardless.

Frankie gulps as she looks at the sight of Grace, who has her long legs stretched out and rested on the edge of the tub. The water runs in rivulets down, creating a drip every so often. It’s dusk, so the candle casts shadows along the walls of the bathroom. She knows what Frankie is seeing and even though she has already had one of the greatest sensations of all today, apparently she’s not done. If she were able to shave years off of the ones she owns and her body wasn’t submerged in water, she’d be reacting to the look that Frankie is giving her.

Grace wants to ask her to come and sit on the tub, hell, maybe even in it. Frankie chooses the toilet lid though before she can speak and Grace watches as she squeezes her legs together. It sends a small thrill throughout her body. _Good, she’s just as far gone with all of this as I am._

“So, I’d apologize verbally for today but I feel I’ve more than made up for the fight earlier,” Frankie says, looking rather pleased with herself. 

Now it is Grace’s turn to bring her legs together tightly, letting them slide from the lip of the tub and back into the depths of the water. “No, I’m sorry. I was wrong to get worked up about...things.” Does she really want to go here with Frankie?

“You can talk to me. This agreement isn’t just for physical stuff. I mean, even though that’s good too. I’m here for you in all of the others ways. I was even before this. You should know that,” Frankie says softly.

How does Grace even begin? It’s hard to peg a line of thought, a feeling, she’s been wrestling with for the last four years.

“I’ve felt this way a while. Maybe not since the beginning because I had to learn to live with you but…” Grace sighs and raises her arms up in exasperation, letting them fall back into the water with a splash. “That’s why I freaked out when you mentioned telling the kids. I still don’t even 100% know what to tell myself.”

“Oh, honey. I understand. What are you worried about though, honestly?”

“Does this mean something, about myself? The fact that I’m pretty sure I’m okay with never being with a man again? Does this mean I’m…” she stops herself from saying it, a lump rising.

“A lesbian? Bisexual? No matter what you are, Grace, it’s okay. Just be who you are. That’s all that matters.”

“You brought up telling the kids though. I feel like I’m not allowed to have this on some level because of Robert and Sol. Almost like they’ve robbed this from me. From us.”

“They’re all adults. When the time is right, we can tell them what we want. The both of us. But this life doesn’t belong to Robert and Sol. They’ve got their own thing going on and we can too.”

With this, Frankie rises from her spot and does come to sit on the edge of the tub. She runs her fingers along the base of Grace’s neck, a touch which Grace finds herself leaning back into. A small hum pings off of the walls of the room, hits Grace’s ears and she can’t help but smile at Frankie.

“Yeah, our thing is totally good too,” Frankie says firmly. She stares down at Grace’s body, barely hidden by the water. Modesty be damned. Grace can’t find it in herself to much care, especially lately when she would stay permanently uncovered if Frankie asked her to.

“Our thing is good,” Grace repeats, agrees. She relaxes again into Frankie’s touch.

These quiet moments, the ones where they can just be themselves, are reshaping the makeup of Grace’s heart. She knows she is falling and as Frankie’s hand moves elsewhere, finding a rope to save herself from it is a possibility she never wants to seek.

 


	8. The Watching

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'd already written most of the last three chapters, this one in its entirety, and I was just waiting to post it. Plus I needed to finish chapter 7. That being said, I was/am reluctant to post this chapter because of the update to "Skinny Love" yesterday. (Which I adore btw, siennaarae) Mostly because a) I didn't want people to think I was plagiarizing b) I didn't want to have too similar of a story. But I also didn't want to waste a chapter I'd already done in full. 
> 
> Anyway, I am going to go ahead and post it with this note stating that the ideas are in the same vein and I hope it doesn't mess up anything. I'd like to think of it is a variation on a theme, the one in which I wrote the chapter after I went to the movie "Book Club" and felt it a travesty to ignore bringing it into the Grace/Frankie world.

The weeks have turned into a couple of months now and Grace can’t remember ever being as happy as she is. She smiles more freely, expresses more often, and the effect is as powerful on Frankie as it is on her. 

They develop a beautiful rhythm with one another that doesn’t so much differ in any particular way that it did before the proposition and then acceptance.  _ Except for the sex _ , Grace thinks as she scoots closer to Frankie on the couch. Because it’s okay to be close now, to touch without being concerned or asking. 

The screen flickers with picture and then the title flashes onto the screen: _50 Shades of Grey_. 

Grace turns sideways and gives Frankie an eye roll. “Really? This is the movie you pick for our weekly movie night?”

“You know me, Grace. I’m a naturally curious person. Plus I was down at Warwick’s listening to a Rastafarian poetry reading when I overheard a group of women close to our age discussing this sordid little diddy for their book club.”

“What a contrast in events: A Jamaican spoken word hour or salacious and graphic porn being talked about in public. How is it that you always manage to be in the precise places these things happen?”

“I’m pretty sure I’m the reincarnation of a very affluent soul in the past, although I do get whims that I also have ties to a wealthy shepherd and pygmy goat farmer as well.”

“Oh, good Lord. I’ll watch this with you but don’t expect me not to comment on the ridiculousness of it all,” Grace says with a shake of her head and crosses her arms. 

Frankie smiles that shit eating grin of hers that sends Grace’s heart thumping. “Have we strayed so far off the beaten path as to where Grace Hanson is no longer interested in male on female pornography and, therefore, has an aversion to all things heterosexual?” 

It’s not a good time to be eating a handful of popcorn because it becomes like sawdust in her mouth and throat, closing up her esophagus to nothing. She chokes and some of it splutters into her lap, rather unceremoniously and slightly cringe-inducing. When she can catch her breath and gains purchase of her thoughts, she struggles to get out what she’s thinking. 

“I thought we talked about this. About how I’m not sticking myself into a category. At all.”

Frankie’s hands shoot up in a conceding gesture. “I’m not saying anything in particular. Unless you are or want to. But trust me. I’m  _ not _ . Not, not, not.” 

“Okay,” Grace says carefully. “Let’s just...watch the movie.”

As far as movies go, Grace can see the appeal for younger audiences. Especially the actor playing Christian Grey. No wonder so many women have poured over the books and flocked to the theaters. For that matter, there is a bit of amusement in the flimsy plot for the male crowd too. She feels the older grouping of her age might have been outside of the target audience though. 

Despite this, a few times during the film, Grace steals a glance over in Frankie’s direction to gauge her reaction. Wonders if it is having any effect on her like it is Grace. And really, she’s sure she would be having a much different response overall, had her and Frankie not made the deal to be sexual stimulants for one another indefinitely. Even the younger generations would probably balk at the sheer frequency and intensity of some of their couplings. Of some of the shit she’s actually doing. 

“I wouldn’t give it the ole Siskel and Ebert two thumbs up, but I can certainly see why the geriatric book club was all aflutter,” Frankie admits as the credits roll. 

“Sex sales,” Grace says simply.

“Yeah, but our sex is hotter,” Frankie smiles. 

“Oh? So it’s not too vanilla for you?” 

“Honey, it’s vanilla alright. And strawberry and mint chocolate chip and caramel and every flavor in between,” she smiles, leaning over and planting a small kiss on Grace’s lips. 

She can taste the salt from the popcorn Frankie has consumed and she wonders if Frankie herself can detect the lust brewing from touching Grace’s. When Frankie starts to pull away, Grace follows and seeks to reconnect. She resituates her mouth over Frankie’s and kisses her deeply, letting her hands roam and stray over bends and curves.

“Looks like someone else may need to join that club,” Frankie says between kisses and Grace just wants her to be quiet. Except with Frankie, that is never the case. While Grace would like nothing more than to continue making out on the couch, apparently Frankie has other ideas. 

“How cliche would it be if we got it on after watching that type of movie? We are absolutely not going to do each other after that,” Frankie says with a head shake and Grace feels herself deflate a bit. 

“Pretty sure it’s expected. Why else would they make this type of movie?” Grace replies. 

“This is porn passed off as fiction and I simply cannot endorse that. Now if you actually wanted to bust out some of my old stag films...”

“So this is where you draw the line?” Grace asks, incredulous. She tries to ignore the fact that Frankie has adult movies stashed somewhere in the house. _How has that not come up yet_? she wonders. She shakes off the idea and moves on. “Not, you know, at any other point where sound judgment was 100% failing us?”

Frankie rises and pats Grace’s shoulder. A conciliatory gesture, Grace supposes, to her jaunty emotions and the beating of prospect a bit lower. What’s the equivalent of blue balls...leaking vagina? It so damn unfair if Frankie intends to leave her sitting on the couch with her engine primed and ready.

“Goodnight, Grace,” Frankie calls out as she walks away. 

“You’re really going to leave me here, like this?” Grace can’t help it. She points down to her private area in a somewhat crass move, feels everything tremble in remembrance. 

“You’re making it hard for me to say goodnight,” Frankie says, remorse creeping into her tone. 

“I’m wanting you to use your mouth for other things,” she croaks out, stops herself when she hears the raspy sound of it in the room. She turns her body on the couch to face Frankie, offers a less poorly constructed sentence. “I just like being with you, that’s all. In...that way.”

Frankie's face melts a little but doesn't thaw completely. Not to the point of giving Grace any sort of relief tonight. “Absence makes the heart grow fonder?” Frankie suggests. “Come on. That was Fifty Shades of  _ Triteness _ .”

“Okay, okay. Rain check. I got it,” Grace relents, holding up her hands. “I guess it’s nights like these I’m glad I co-own a vibrator business.”

“My ornamental ears are going to mosey on out the door before I can’t take it anymore and give you want you want.”

“Goodnight, Frankie,” Grace says softly. Means it. 

“I…” Frankie begins then stops, mouth hanging open in unuttered words. Grace feels a tightness in her chest that flounders soon after for a much different reason. “I’ll see you tomorrow morning.”

It isn’t the finish Grace wanted for the night. 

********************

Somehow, time passes in a blur of nothing substantial. It’s two days after that stupid fucking movie and Grace can’t seem to shake it from her brain. Maybe it’s a symptom of withdrawal, a thing she has tried to avoid her entire life. She intuits that it must feel like this since she can’t focus or do anything really except think about how long it’s been since she’s been able to touch Frankie and be touched in return. 

Sixty-seven long, tedious, stretched out hours of not doing the thing she wants most. For this reason, perhaps, she finds herself making stupid choices. Like walking idly past the groceries and instead levitating toward the household department and a shelf with zip ties and cords and rope and…

_ Holy shit _ . She needs to get away from here. Her mind is abandoning her completely and she’s contemplating things only the twinge between her thighs is dictating. This mentality is getting her nowhere logical. 

An idea rises in her, bubbles to the surface, and she begins to coast on autopilot. Somehow she makes it home and somehow she manages to find exactly what she’s looking for buried inside of her closet. The idea gains momentum and she feels downright giddy with anticipation. The timing has to be precise though. She can’t misjudge this, can’t let this risk end up staggering the trajectory her and Frankie have been navigating. 

They eat dinner inside of the relative flow of their old lives, the one  _ before _ . Grace is a master at role-playing and so she knows she can do this, fall easily into the old mold because it’s what she sat inside of for the better part of four years. She can listen to Frankie yammer on about whatever and even interject a bit of commentary to show interest, to keep Frankie tied to her and in good spirits for what she has planned. Or at least what she is going to attempt. 

It’s nothing as ridiculous as having Frankie eat her out in a Del Taco or doing the same to Frankie on top of their dining room table. But it is bold and because of that, it makes Grace thrum with a nervous energy just below the surface for the whole meal.

After they are finished, she excuses herself demurely. An act she knows Frankie will question since she’s practically been stuck to Frankie’s side and dry humping her into sexual submission for the last few months. She kisses Frankie on the cheek with the premise that she is going to shower because her knee has a slight ache to it when in actuality, the ache is a bit higher. 

Closing the door to her bedroom, she starts to set up quietly. It’s only a matter of time before Frankie comes knocking and she wants to be completely ready. Opening her undergarment drawer, she withdraws all of the items they will need for tonight and lays them out in a line on top of her bed. She stands to stare for a moment. Adrenaline and apprehension pump and her mind starts to sing with annoying questions. 

_ Am I making a mistake? Is this too much? Will she be repulsed by this? What on earth am I thinking?  _

It’s the same internal voice recorder that has been on replay consistently since the whole agreement began. Honestly, since the proposition. Like much else, it doesn’t help to dwell on these things and so she doesn’t. She shoves past it and shoves articles of her clothing off, picking up one of the items on the bed. Quickly, she dresses and removes her discarded clothes from the floor. Grabbing her black robe from the back of the bathroom door, she covers herself just in time as a small knock sounds. 

The other items sit blatantly obvious on the comforter and Grace sucks in a sharp breath, questioning herself one last time about whether she is capable of following through. Before she has time to change her mind, the door creaks open and she tries her best to stand nonchalantly, yet somewhat provocatively against the chair she has moved to in front of her bed. 

Frankie enters the room and eyes her suspiciously, as well she should. Grace begins to feel heat and moisture pool lower and she shoots Frankie a seductive look. 

“I knew you were up to something,” Frankie sighs, licking her lips and raking her eyes up and down Grace’s form. 

_ Good. She’s still hungry _ , Grace smiles.  _ Only this time, it’s for me.  _

She walks over to Frankie, grabbing a couple of the items off of the bed. When she reaches her, Grace lets the black robe fall to the floor revealing the lacy outfit underneath. She knows she is way too old for shit like this but the intake of air from Frankie is worth every penny she spent on it. 

When the scarves weave around Frankie’s wrists, Grace is sure the other woman has stopped breathing completely. Time is of the essence, so she quickly makes cuffs out of them, tight ones that will remain inescapable for the duration of the experience. Making sure Frankie’s hands remain immobile, she leads her to the chair in front of the bed and sits her softly in the seat. A thrill undulates up her spine and Grace can barely contain herself with what she hopes is going to rock not only her socks but Frankie’s as well. 

“Methinks you took the movie a bit literal,” Frankie gulps. Grace cinches the scarves securely around the legs of the chair and looks into Frankie’s blazing eyes. “Thank sweet Jesus you did.”

Grace can’t help but feel a bit smug at the fact Frankie is thanking a deity she doesn’t believe in for an act that hasn’t happened yet. It’s these contradictions she has come to live for with Frankie, pushing her precariously to an edge only to see if she will follow Grace over it.

With her best attempt at seductiveness, she lightly sits in Frankie’s lap. The angle will do everything to help the way her breasts look in the lingerie, the cups now almost level with Frankie’s eyes and nose and...mouth. Grace lets her thighs squeeze Frankie with the gentlest of teases, sending a mum promise of intention.

“So maybe the movie had more of an effect on me that I originally let on,” Grace says, rising from Frankie’s lap and making her way over to the bed, to the last item that has remained untouched. When Frankie sees it, she lets out a gasp that could knock the walls of the room down. 

“Bloody hell,” she murmurs as Grace brings the vibrant purple of her Ménage a Moi up to eye level. 

“I figured we could use this for a little foreplay,” Grace smiles, depositing herself back into Frankie’s lap. “And maybe a bit of the main action too.”

Eager to get started, Grace leans in to capture Frankie’s lips. She wants to go slow, be sensual. She might not be a professional at bondage or anything, but she can figure out enough to hopefully make it good for the both of them. 

Frankie though? Frankie’s on devour mode and pressing hot nibbles and licks to Grace’s neck. Her nose leans in and nudges her, puffs hot breath on Grace’s skin in an already present exasperation.  _ Her hands. _

Grace has robbed her of a thing she depends mostly on, her artist’s fingers itching to mold, sculpt, trace, reconnect and remember. Underneath Grace’s palm, she feels Frankie’s bicep flex, no doubt pulling on the silken restraints binding her in place. She senses Frankie’s frustration and perhaps now is as good a time as any to reward Frankie a bit for her patience. 

She deposits her hand to rest on the curve of Frankie’s neck, letting the other with the vibrator roam languidly down the indentions and curves of Frankie’s body. Grace leans back a little to let it rub on the outside of Frankie’s lower region, knowing exactly where it’s touching her, even through the fabric of her clothes. 

“It’s so un-fucking fair that you’ve got me trussed up here and I can’t…” she pants as the vibrator circles and presses. It isn’t even on and Frankie is a flutter. “You’re making me appreciate the fact that I’ve always been able to touch you.”

“They say absence makes the heart grow fonder,” Grace mimics in a mirror of Frankie’s words to her not long ago. She pulls down the lace cup of the lingerie and forces Frankie to connect. It’s the sensation she’s been missing for what feels like forever, even if it’s only been 67 hours. _But who's counting_...

Since this is about mutual pleasure, while the ministrations continue to her breasts, Grace takes advantage and presses the button on her Ménage. She lets it touch Frankie and feels a rough bite at her nipple. Below her, a plethora of sounds. Grunts, groans, moans. All of it a harmonious ringing in her ears. 

“You’re really gonna make me come without removing a singular article of clothing? Grace, you trollop,” Frankie mutters. 

“Says the woman who disrobed my bottom half and knelt on the floor of a Del Taco bathroom to orally please me,” Grace answers, letting her free hand push up under Frankie’s blouse to caress the outline of her breast while the other hand continues with the vibrator. 

“Fuck…” 

“Not on the agenda for tonight. Just getting us both off with a little deviation from our normal routine.”

“Grace, seriously, I’m not going to last if you keep this up.”

Deftly, she lifts Frankie’s top and lets herself taste, lick, sample and indulge. She relishes attention to the nipple, first one and then the other. A croak soon lets loose from Frankie and Grace knows the cadence, has heard it so much lately that it’s become one of her favorite sounds. 

“I didn’t want you to last anyway,” she responds and Frankie sags a little against the chair. She looks absolutely spent and it sends a charge through her to know that Frankie has to be a mess below her clothing. Where Grace longs to touch and bury herself in. But she’s got bigger plans, meaning to pile onto the already overloaded sexuality occurring. 

She stands and goes to sit on the bed, spreading her legs wide so that what’s between them is visible to the woman in front of her.  _ Here goes nothing _ , Grace sighs. She brings the vibrator to herself and pulls aside the fabric of her lingerie. Frankie’s eyes go wide and she wants to tell her,  _ Yeah, I’m going to do it just like this.  _ That’s not what comes out.

“Watch me,” she whispers and begins. 

Frankie makes a choking noise as Grace warms her body up with the Ménage, drags it along places to get the heat and moisture going. Based on what she just did to Frankie though, it won’t take long or very much. 

As the vibrations massage her body, she closes her eyes. Soon, she’ll be able to properly please herself. Images play across her eyes as her mind floats to the things that she and Frankie have shared together. Her brain creates the pictorial representation of their lives with one another, both sides of the spectrum. Oddly, each equally satisfying to think about. Happiness blooms in her chest and desire lower, two entwining emotions. 

By this point, she’s ready. Can feel her body producing the sensations and friction she needs for the final part of this show she’s putting on. Gradually, she takes the Ménage into her body, begins to move it in and out. Careful, of course, to hit the spots that will help her arrive at a glorious ending. 

“Oh man, if you could see what I’m seeing,” Frankie breathes, voice sounding ragged and arousal curling around her words again. A should be impossibility, but this is what they do to each other.

Well, why not see what she is doing? Grace opens her eyes and looks at Frankie who looks poised to yell out something at any moment. Her eyes though are like laser beams on where the Ménage has been disappearing and so Grace follows her line of sight to look down at her own body. Having Frankie look at her while she is doing this is wild, feeling almost primitive on some level. 

She feels the build, the inevitability of the cliff’s edge fast approaching. Leaning back on an elbow, she opens her body to the maximum it can go, showing everything. Leaving it all on the field, as she had told Frankie once. Boldness has been a part of this, so much more so than she is with herself. She lets the tangle and coil of sensitivity unravel, passion slamming into her at an alarming amount. Her toes dig into the carpet as she comes, hand gripping the bedsheet and she begs her elbow to hold her up through the onslaught. 

The echo of her orgasm bounces off the walls and when she comes back to herself, to look at Frankie staring across at her with an animal regard to what just occurred, Grace doesn’t know whether to apologize or pat herself on the back.

Instead, she tosses the vibrator, slick with remembrance, onto the bed and makes her way to Frankie, bound and oddly silent in the chair. Fearlessly, she goes underneath the garments of Frankie’s lower half, checking and surveying. What she finds is both satisfying and astonishing. She removes her hand, bringing it up to show Frankie what she’s produced as if the woman has no clue. 

A squeak escapes from her roommate turned lover, followed by a “Christ Almighty.” More utterings to the Gods. As Grace brings her fingers that touched Frankie to her mouth, tasting the rawness and splendor, she leans forward, determined to create a triumvirate of declarations to anyone or anything listening in the sky. 


	9. The Metamorphosis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *Second to last chapter and it's pretty fluffy. I couldn't have them banging in EVERY update.
> 
> *Again, thank you for your continued support with the kudos and comments. I appreciate every one. You are all wonderfully awesome.

Much of their life together has remained the same, a thing that Grace is increasingly thankful for. The arrangement has managed to stay unvocalized to anyone outside of themselves and perhaps it’s for this reason that Grace is so invested in it. It feels good to have something that is just theirs, a shared secret.

Nothing of the past three months has become trivial or boring. They meet and clash with as much fervor as the night Grace sought Frankie out in the studio and lit this whole thing on fire. By now, the burn would usually be easing but it continues to flame and scorch at a titanic level.

It's passionate, it's raw, it's tender and unexpected and all of the adjectives that usually define a romantic affair. Grace finds herself almost needing it, a baser urge beating heartily and an indulgence that’s the sweetest one she’s ever partaken in.

Morning dawns, sending soft light casting across the dips and valleys of the sheets of the bed. Grace has learned that what draws Frankie to her sanctuary is what’s between her thighs, but what makes her stay is a list of other things that stack to make a series of quiet bits of happiness.

Today is no exception as a smile lazily creeps onto Grace’s face as she watches Frankie snore away, tucked in some beautiful dream she hopes. Taking her fingers, she presses softly into her favorite places on the body before her: the notch between Frankie’s collarbone and throat, the underside of her nipple and breast, the indentations of each space between ribs, the soft skin of her belly button. The sheet keeps the rest of Frankie hidden and as much as Grace would like to touch her most favorite place of all, she stifles the urge to do so. Catching Frankie unaware would be rousing, but Grace prefers to have a willing participant in any and all acts.

“Mmm, good morning to me,” Frankie mutters through a dissipating sleepy haze.

“Morning,” Grace replies, stroking Frankie’s cheek, tenderly.

“Got anything planned for today?”

“Hopefully more of this.”

“I mean, before this part. Any pressing business to attend to?”

“What are you getting at, Frankie? I already said no.”

“Oh, goodie. Then I want to take you on a date,” she beams. “None of that fake shit where we end up some place that I say you’ll enjoy but what I really mean is I picked it for me to enjoy. I’m talking an honest to goodness, 100%, authentically romantic outing with yours truly.”

Grace can’t help but laugh at the sweetness of the gesture and Frankie tilts her head sideways in a questioning manner. She scoots in a little bit closer to Frankie’s body and weaves a hand through the covers to plant upon her waist.

“Don’t you think we would be going about this a little backward if I agreed to go on a date’? Usually, a date comes before the sex.”

“So I like to do things a bit backward,” Frankie dismisses and then turns her own body on its side. “Come on. You’ve got nothing going on. I’ve got nothing going on. Let's get out of the house a while and enjoy being with one another.”

“And where would this date of yours be to?”

“I think I’ve experienced plenty of off the wall with you. How about something super trope-y, what every other red-blooded person should enjoy?”

“So, super conventional.”

“Like Black’s Beach or Ellen Browning Scripps Park?”

“Surprise me,” Grace smiles, kisses Frankie softly and slowly. Disconnecting from her, she shifts backward and throws the sheet back that was covering her. Standing, she languidly stretches and hears a sharp intake of breath behind her. When she turns, Frankie meets her with a look of amazement.

“I still can’t believe you’re…” _Mine_ , Grace hopes is the finish but Frankie stops. Seems to think better of the direction of her words and then begins again. “I can’t believe I get I have to you like this, whenever I want you. You’re radiant.”

Grace can think of more than a few adjectives to describe Frankie as well, but her chest tightens. To say them would run the risk of making this, making them, more than it and they are. It was supposed to be casual, right? She’s finding that she is increasingly bad at that.

Nick had wanted it and she hadn’t been able to give it to him, too involved in her mind in some version of what’s currently happening with who it’s happening with. Everyone since Robert has tried, futilely, to take some piece of her away for their own. She’s tried, god has she tried, to let go and let someone in. None of them had been right though.

She smiles to Frankie, leans over with her naked form and brings her hand to her lips. Grace feels the soft skin and lines that time has etched and feels a flurry of emotion swirl. Letting go of Frankie’s hand, she retreats to the bathroom and closes the door softly. Looking in the mirror at her stripped body, she can see her walls have been stripped as well. Whatever she had told herself about this, about them, is failing.

Their agreement, to Grace, is no longer casual. She wonders how long she can go without uttering to Frankie how she had messed up their dynamic completely. How whatever they’re doing is not the thing that it started out to be.

She supposes that tends to happen when the last vestiges of resolve are cracking. Perhaps that’s why it feels so foreign, yet so damn good. It must be what happens when you fall in love.

********************

Time passes quickly when you aren’t wanting it to. Before Grace knows it, it’s time to get ready for her and Frankie’s outing. It’s an emotional torrent, an amalgam of thoughts and feelings as she stands and looks at the rows of clothing, shoes, belts, scarves. Everything is a blur and she can’t seem to focus on anything of substance.

Thinking back, she can’t remember feeling this way about anyone that has courted her throughout her life. Ever since she started receiving orgasms from Jerome Hodges in 11th grade, they all don’t measure up to what she is getting now. Sure, Robert’s attention had been nice back when they were younger but the luster she had felt was lost not long after the “I do’s.” Guy was a fun distraction from the fallout of her marriage and Byron made her feel noticed in a commonplace world.

Frankie’s words from three years ago wash forth, about how Phil Milstein was the “love of her life.” And at that point, maybe he had been. He taught her to see herself for the person she could be, to let go of the Say Grace version of herself. Even with him though, she was always still performing. Like she couldn’t let go and be the person who she was in case Phil didn’t like what he saw. He had met her during her Robert years and that is the version of her he was initially attracted to. To show him something different ran the risk of losing him again and she couldn’t do that. He had, eventually, done it for her. Then came a silent year, where it was just her and Frankie. It was wonderful and full of life until it was ripped away.

Frankie had Santa Fe and Jacob, so Grace had to find something to pass the time. That something turned into someone. A someone whom she should have been able to make it work with. But there’s something about telling your boyfriend that you can’t leave your roommate behind, the fact so glaring that you gave up your independence as a person to be with her. About how when the thought of not waking up and not seeing her each day sent an ache so deep, even the idea of it was hard to recover from.

She chooses something less stuffy than the crisp pink dress she wore for Phil, a step down from the harshness of the business suit she put on to have a brunch with Nick that first time. It’s an outfit she has yet to wear but Frankie mentioned comfortable, so it definitely fits that category.

She pulls the soft white fabric from the closet, makes sure to get a neutral color bra and matching undergarments to hide underneath. In her jewelry box, she selects a simple gold chain with a small pendant, a double looped bracelet of the same color. Nervously, she slips on a gold band onto her left middle finger and one onto her right as well.

Grace opts for simple makeup, nothing over the top or flashy. A little extra mascara, yes, but a bronze swish of rouge to her cheekbones and some pale pink applied to her lips, matching her nail color almost exactly. Her hair is curled back in her normal style and when she looks into the mirror, she sucks in a breath as her hands rest on her stomach. She almost swears she can feel the butterflies floating around inside, a ludicrous notion because of all that has happened.

This feels bigger though, more important than a casual date. They already know they’re compatible sexually, but it’s been a while since they have been alone together without their agreement sparking between them.

It’s like prom night when she descends the stairs. Frankie is leaning over the bar area of the kitchen, eating a pre-date snack of pretzel sticks chalked full of salt. “I nervous chew,” she had told Grace once, so it’s easy to see Frankie is just as keyed up for tonight as Grace is.

Frankie stops chewing, the stick falling out of her hand and into the bar. She sucks in a breath and then stands up straight, running her palms along the front of her outfit. Her eyes twinkle and her lips turn up into a smile, one Grace can’t help but want to touch.

As she gets to the bottom step, Frankie meets her and gazes up into her eyes. She’s about a foot taller at this angle and can look down on Frankie, at how beautiful she looks tonight. Her usually flurry of fabric is more controlled. She wears only a chunky necklace and quartz ring on her finger, both an onyx color that coordinate well with the flower patterned emerald green of her frock. It looks to be her only layer, which Grace notices deliciously. That might come in handy later.

“How is it that I’ve seen you every day for the last four years practically and you still know how to walk into a room and stun me?” Frankie says with a shake of her head.

“You couldn’t stand when I used to walk in the room,” Grace shoots back.

“Hey, goes both ways,” Frankie shrugs, then a devilish grin spreads across her face. “Kind of like us. Or me. Maybe not you anymore, but I’m not sure. You too? Or just me?”

“You’re rambling,” Grace points out. She has to fight not to engage in the heavy topic. “How about we skip over semantics and you show me what you have planned for the night.” Wrapping her arms around the back of Frankie’s neck, she presses their bodies more closely together.

“If you keep doing things like this, the only thing you’ll be seeing is the back of your eyelids while I touch you into oblivion,” Frankie purrs as Grace’s hands roam.

“Hopefully I’ll be doing that by the end of the night too. But right now,” Grace holds up a finger. “Date.”

“You’re seriously into this?” Frankie asks, an uncertain look spreading over her features. “I mean, you come down here looking like this and aren’t the least bit worried about what I have planned for us?”

“I know I’ve mentioned you and your hippie sex pile days, but I’m hoping that is off the plan book for the night.”

“No…” Frankie trails off, digs her fingers into Grace’s waist like a punctuation mark. Like it should be an ending, but it really isn’t.

“You’re acting weirder than normal,” Grace deadpans.

Frankie throws up her hands and takes a few steps away from Grace. She starts to scratch her head but apparently remembers she took a comb to her hair and lets it fall to her side. “Okay, I’m a little keyed up about tonight. Joanne and I have been talking a lot lately and she’s going back and forth with me on this. About what I’ve come up with tonight. I just want it to be...perfect.” She lets or a sigh and shrugs.

Grace steps down onto the ground level of the home and stops Frankie’s pacing. “Frankie, calm down. It’s just me.”

“Don’t you see, Grace? That matters a lot. A lot, a lot. What if I fuck this all up? What if what I’ve planned is too tropey? What if what I’ve planned isn’t tropey enough? Oh, heavens to Betsy. I’m over analyzing and it hasn’t even happened yet. Can you even do an analysis…”

Listening to Frankie get herself worked into a tizzy was not a new thing, by any means, but Grace is feeling anxious herself and she absolutely can’t talk her back from a ledge if that’s where she’s headed. She grabs Frankie’s face in her hands, a deja vu moment. This time there is no gun, no animosity stirring.

“Whatever we are doing, it will be wonderful,” Grace offers simply. The words have a double meaning, harkening to the present as well as the future. If Frankie notices, she doesn’t let on. She just closes her eyes and nods, some of the tension peeling away.

When Frankie opens her eyes, Grace wouldn’t call it serenity that she sees. But it’s something close. And for wherever they are headed, it seems as good as anything.

********************

Romance has been fleeting where Grace has been concerned. When you have to spell out to a man how to be with you, the wonder becomes stale. While not everything has been choreographed, too much of the past is a tired and well-known dance. Kiss me this way, touch me here. It’s all taken so much _effort_.

When Frankie takes the lead and pulls Grace into the front door of The Marine Room, she can’t help but be shocked by what lengths Frankie has gone to in order to make their first date very by the book. She’s done nothing and Frankie has already done so much.

Instead of communal eating with fondue pots, Grace can’t help but look around at the high vaulted ceilings and tall windows revealing the surf right outside. The lights are down low due to it being the dinner hour and Frankie’s smile shimmers in the candlelight once the waiter shows them to their table by the panes of glass. Outside, the sky is painted with pinks and oranges, the Pacific waves crashing on the shores below. It’s a lot to take in, especially when it is coming from a woman whom Grace has spent the better part of four years questioning her ability to be serious.

Refined isn’t exactly a word in her repertoire for Frankie, but as Frankie pulls out Grace’s chair and does all of the chivalrous gestures customary, Grace can’t help but feel overwhelmed.

“You didn’t have to do that you know,” Grace whispers as they sit. “Or any of this.”

“And what kind of date would it be if I didn’t pull out all the stops? I mean, I could have taken you replacement yurt hunting so that we could commune with the great outdoors and have tantric sex under the stars. I figured this was more in your wheelhouse though,” she beams, like a proud kid presenting their creation at show and tell. “I hope you’re into French stuff because I ordered us a bottle of Schieferkopf. I hear it’s a decent blend, without breaking the bank.”

As she nods to the waiter who deposits the bucket on the table, Frankie’s eyes go wide. “Not that I wouldn’t break the bank for you, but you know, our money is sort of tied together these days. What with Vybrant and all…”

Grace can’t help but laugh and reaches out to grab Frankie’s hand. “You’re talking too much again. It’s fine. Everything is. This is beautiful.”

Their glasses are filled and orders placed. Frankie orders organic, a Summer Orange Mushroom Cocotte while Grace opts for the goat cheese brûlée. She sips her wine, can’t help but wish that they were cuddled up together. Somewhat closer, her hand able to wrap around Frankie’s.

This is a different beast altogether though. She’s fine with the seclusion of their own home and the sometimes downright deviant that goes on within its walls. Public has its own pitfalls and it gnaws a little on Grace, stuck between knowing what to do and wanting to do. While California may seem like the Mecca for same-sex relationships, La Jolla is its own animal. One Grace isn’t sure she’s ready to tame.

Appearances, from their standpoint, probably looks like a couple of business colleagues celebrating a milestone or best friends meeting up after a long time apart. But as she looks around the restaurant, she feels self-consciousness beating hard. It’s a weeknight, but mostly couples fill the space. It’s more than a little glaring. About how in another life, Grace might have been sitting here with a different gender. With a man whom she would be taking home to let them borrow her body for the night.

She glances up from her appetizer to find Frankie watching. Silently questioning. While this may have just started out as sex, Frankie’s has been learning everything there is to know about Grace every day for the past four years. Enough to know when she’s letting something get the best of her.

“Here we are with fancy booze in a fancy place,” Frankie begins and points out herself. “I even tried to be less _me_ for you and you look like you’re about to jump out of your skin. What’s going on, Grace?”

“I love the way you are,” Grace blurts, still staring down at her plate and fork scraping slightly on the china. She jerks her head up and feels her breath start to become more rapid. Because of what she’s just said, what she has potentially given away. “I mean…”

Frankie’s face is unreadable and she is frustratingly giving Grace the time and space to fill with her backpedaling. They haven’t gone there yet, not with that word.

“I just mean, you don’t have to change for me. I wouldn’t want that. That’s what I was trying to say, not, you know, the other thing,” Grace offers as recompense.

Frankie leans back in her chair and is that a hint of disappointment on her face? If it is, it’s quickly erased and replaced with a kind quirk of her lips and a nod of her head. “Okay,” she tells her.

“Okay,” Grace murmurs.

Somehow the coverup doesn’t feel like one that needed to be hidden at all. Their plates arrive and Grace takes a long pull at her wine glass before she sets it back on the table, her hands managing to shake just a little less. The meal develops an awkwardness that wasn’t there before, unsaid truths holding tongues.

*****************

They’d watched the sun tuck itself beneath the horizon and the moon comes out to shimmer on the surface of the water. Another bottle of wine had helped loosen some of the tension Grace had created by her untimely declaration and subsequent rescinding, but Frankie still seems nonplussed about something.

Out of the eyes of the patrons, they’d made their way down to the Cove side by side, the Pacific rolling nearby and the stars coming out for the night to cover the world in a lighted, pinprick blanket. Occasionally when Grace felt bold enough as they walked, she let her shoulder brush against Frankie’s in order to just feel some part of her. To touch her innocently when secretly wanting everything.

The stairs had been somewhat of a challenge, but they had both managed to make it to the sand. A few people scattered the beach but the small area hadn’t been overwhelmed at the hour.

Now, Grace has got her flats in her right hand as she feels the sand shift under her toes. Her knees are already starting to protest, small tinges of no longer dormant pain spiking now and again. Glancing upward, she marvels at the world and feels a little smaller inside of herself. “So much wonder,” she says in awe. “Sometimes I forget to even look up. I’m so concerned with what’s on the ground. Although lately, I’d have to say the view has been pretty good too.” She turns and throws a lazy smile to Frankie, who doesn’t much seem like she’s heard the comment. Looking around, Grace grabs her hand when she sees no one really paying much attention to them and pulls her to a small indentation in the surface of the surrounding rock.

Frankie has a look on her face that Grace rarely sees, one that seems stuck between a mixture of concern, concentration, and resolve. She leans against the earth and has her eyes looking at the ground, not bothering to acknowledge anything other than the sand she is kicking with her feet. Even though their hands are still connected, even though Grace hasn’t let go, Frankie seems elsewhere.

“Okay, this night has gone like a ping-pong game. First, you were acting odd, then I clammed up during the meal. Now we’re back to you. Are we okay? You’ve been quiet for the last little bit.” Frankie had been nervous about planning the right thing, Grace had had to choke down the urge to let Frankie hear the three words she’s hardly told anyone and meant. Now that those moments have passed, it’s another grasp at trying to gain footing on shifting ground.

Grace leans in, tracing her hand along Frankie’s cheek and pressing her into the cove a little bit. Their bodies line up again, as perfect as ever, and Grace has to stifle a sigh. She's hoping the answer to her question is something she wants to hear.

Frankie brings her head up finally, gazes past Grace and out into the night. The cool breeze whips at her brownish-gray hair and the only sound is the ocean’s ebb and flow. She sighs and then meets Grace’s eyes, a clouded expression owning her features. It’s for the reason Grace’s chest tightens.

“I know we haven’t defined what it is we are doing. Hell, we said we wouldn’t,” Frankie begins.

 _Shit, she’s ending this,_ Grace thinks. She staggers a bit, tries to gain purchase on the rock behind Frankie’s head and shoulders. _She’s_ _realized how crazy we both are and is completely over our arrangement and wants nothing more to do with me. That’s why she brought me here tonight. How am I going to face her in the morning?_

Grace’s insecurities start to run rampant and she finds it harder to breathe, like her lungs are collapsing on her. She’s never really sat and pondered how important all of this has become to her and suddenly, the prospect of losing it seems life altering in the worst kind of way. Worse than losing Robert. Worse than losing the house. Worse than anything she can possibly imagine.

Frankie must sense her uneasiness because she snakes her arm around Grace’s waist and makes a move for Grace’s free hand with the other. All Grace can think is _this is it._ Tears start to form and she wants to run away, to not be here for this even though it’s directly involving her.

“Grace…” Frankie begins and her tone falters. She looks down again, to where they are connected and no space is between. If Grace didn’t know better, would say she was holding back tears herself. “Will you...will you be my girlfriend?”

Frankie lets a laugh escape her that’s devoid of any humor really. It’s more like a balloon being popped or finally being able to take in air after being submerged for way too long.

It’s weird how Grace hears the words Frankie speaks but doesn’t really process them. How they sit, almost unreal, in the air around her. Around them. She doesn’t answer, doesn’t know how to make herself say words.

A tear slips down Frankie’s cheek and she lets one of Grace’s hands go to wipe it away. “Okay, I’m being an emotional shit, but nothing would make me happier. Even though we’re both probably too old to call each other that. I want you to know, no need you to know, that I want that of you. That I want to be that for you too.” Frankie stops. “Jesus, Grace. Say something. Stop me from rambling.”

“I...I can’t,” falls out of Grace’s mouth.

“Can’t say something or can’t be my girlfriend? Because one is tolerable and the other is going to make me bury my head in the sand until I smother.”

Grace grabs her and kisses her then. She peppers them onto Frankie’s lips and cheeks and anywhere else she can reach before pulling her into a rib crushing hug. “I can’t believe you’re asking me.” They stand holding each other, not letting go.

After a few beats, sound. “You haven’t answered my question,” Frankie whispers against Grace, a hand holding steadily over her heart.

It’s flinging herself out to sea without any flotation device, tying a rock to her ankles so she can sink deeply, taking the hand Frankie has stationary on her so that it can enter her skin and scoop out the contents of her chest for forever keeping. It’s categorizing the uncategorical, the unexplainable, the undeniable. Grace says “Yes” all the same.


	10. The Confession

It takes a lot to go back to a life she wanted to destroy from its inception.

When she walks in the door of Walden Villas, she fights the urge to scream. Maybe because of the stifling atmosphere, her palms begin to sweat and the intake of air is a little difficult. The comparison of this place to a jail seems appropriate, but then Grace reminds herself she willingly volunteered to share a space with Frankie, to give up her life and freedom to be with her.

Or she could have chosen Frankie long ago, before Santa Fe and hot air balloons and hardwood floors. Before cocky playboys with annoying persistence, but kind hearts. To when there was a room that was too full and too sad to hold everything like the bodies and emotions and life within it, and while there may have been a flame burning out, another one was sparking when two sets of eyes met across the expanse and forgave one another in that instant.

Trekking down the familiar path of their hall- no _the_ hall because it was never hers-she makes her way to Arlene’s door and knocks. She has to wipe her palms on her slacks and tries to get ahold of herself before the door opens. Even knowing that she can freely leave, being here again is overwhelming.

Behind the door, a bit of shuffling and then it’s pulled open to reveal their friend. Grace feels a pang in her chest just looking at her-so jolly and upbeat, physically fit and by all outward appearances, not needing this place at all. How unfair it is to know of the evil that lurks beneath the surface of her, the one she knows Arlene can’t control. The thing no one their age can. It’s _so_ damn unfair.

For a split second, Grace wonders if she’s having a good day. She should have called beforehand but she had felt the magnetic pull to be here, now, today, and had followed that through. She finds herself needing Arlene right now, needing her old friend to be lucid. To remember they’ve known each other for years. A smile spreads across her face and she reaches out her hands to touch Grace’s shoulders, gripping them in a comfortable hold.

“I’d be lying if I said I didn’t wish I had to come to your room every day and try to convince you to join me in the dining hall and you, resoundingly, telling me absolutely not.”

“And run the risk of having these people think I’ve finally been conquered? Absolutely not,” Grace smiles. But in another way, she already has been, she thinks.

“Come, sit. Let’s catch up over a glass of tea. I need all of the good gossip,” Arlene grins in that warm way that makes Grace feel so at ease.

She’s holding a sweating glass in her hands and leaning forward on the couch when the words tumble out of her, like they’ve been trapped for years and not months. “Frankie and I are together,” Grace lets out in a whoosh of sound and air.

Arlene sits still, her eyes piercing and calm. Calmer than Grace feels inside.

She knows their generation didn’t grow up like this. That being with someone of the same gender wasn’t talked about. Sure, you knew sometimes. There were whispers. But you didn’t openly discuss it, didn’t let people in on the lifestyle you’d chosen that was so far removed from the June Cleavers of the 50’s. She also isn’t ready to hear the inevitable comparison: “Oh, so you’re like Robert now.”

Time continues on, agonizingly so. Arlene just waits, like there’s some puzzle piece Grace hasn’t given her in order to move on. Like there’s something else to admit. And Grace supposes there is, an eloquently laid out description of what her life has become since Walden Villas and the reconstruction of physical walls while destruction has occurred to internal ones.

“Say something,” Grace croaks through the heaviness in her chest and throat. Tears are springing and she wills them to stay put.

It seems she is waiting for something that will never come through. Arlene, _god_ , Arlene. She’s so much, being separate from Janet and that crew. She’s warm and kind and all of the polar opposites that are good. She still holds a smile and then shrugs. “You’ve been together.”

Grace’s mood deflates a bit, forgetting this might be a struggle for Arlene to get. She doesn’t know where to wade, where she can find Arlene in a fog that’s unending. A tightness in her throat creates a stammer in her voice. “Not...not as simple as that.”

Because it isn’t. Nothing is simple and everything has a thousand parts and cogs and why can’t anything ever be easy? Why does there have to be depth and complexity to every facet of Grace’s waking moments?

Arlene blinks again, eyelashes fluttering, all innocence and naïveté. Then something flickers and she grins. “I wasn’t born yesterday. Or the day before that. Actually, it was a lot of yesterday’s ago, but who’s counting?”

“What?”

“Weren’t you together when you were here?”

Grace is taken aback. She lets out a laugh lacking any substance really and tries to gain purchase of her rambling thoughts. “No,” she says with a shake of her head. “No, after.”

Arlene shrugs and throws Grace a look. “It’s hard to keep up with these days, you know,” and waves a hand around her head in a flurry. “Lots of ins and outs. I just take them as they come. I’m pretty sure that’s one thought that stuck with me through the grasping for clarity though.”

“Of all things, why us?” Grace shakes her head, incredulous.

“Oh, I don’t know. After you and Robert split, I always thought Janet was incredibly hard on you. She dismissed you when you tried to talk about the divorce and I could tell you needed a shoulder, even if it was hers. Then Mary died and even though you had Nick, we all thought…” she stops herself, perhaps at the mention of Nick’s name.

Damn, of all the times for her to be incredibly coherent. Out of the haze, she’s managed to hang on to all of this?

“I thought,” she begins again, looking at Grace with those incredibly caring eyes, “that Nick wasn’t it really either.” Arlene looks almost wistful as she seems to float off, losing her focus a bit. Her eyes wander briefly, but then she shakes her head and rolls her shoulders. “You deserve to be happy after everything you’ve been through. And with Frankie, it all seemed so, oh I don’t know, effortless. Like you relaxed and forgot about holding up appearances or fitting in.”

Grace wants to cry, to let everything sitting tightly inside bleed out with fervor. It seems incredibly poignant that Arlene has managed to see this of them when there wasn’t even a them not so long ago.

Suddenly Santa Fe and emotional voids and finding one another again through broken and retirement homes seems so incredibly worth it. Grace didn’t start the agreement with any intention of it morphing to what it has become. They were both lonely in separate, different ways. While she’s admitted it to few, it’s been the best of her entire life.

“Thank you, Arlene,” Grace sniffs, batting a tear away as she reaches for the woman’s hand. Something lodges hard in her again, knowing this is the first of an increasingly tougher line of people to tell.

“Do the others know?” Arlene asks, concern etching her features. Again, somehow managing to read Grace like a book.

“Soon,” Grace says because maybe. Or maybe not. It’s as much up in the air as anything right now because she hasn’t set out a plan for any of it yet. They’ll get there, eventually, to a place where everyone knows and life is flowing on. Now, small steps. “So how about that tea?”

The glasses sit all but forgotten on the table in front of them, condensation running down the surface. She picks one up and motions it toward Arlene, a sort of toast to coming out she supposes.

The clink echoes in the room as they take a sip. Grace knows she’ll have to echo this conversation many times over. But for now? One down amongst the many.

**************************

The day starts off quiet, a soft sigh of breath on her ear and the tracing of hands down the curvature of her back. She smiles against the pillow, the case of it shielding her happiness from glowing outward.

Their night had ended with almost as little sound, save for the rustle of clothes falling to the floor, the exhale of air as they were finally able to touch one another. Surprisingly, that was the extent of it. Content to just hold one another after being apart, to bury inside of a set of arms and have it feel like home.

Grace knew it had to end. They’ve got a meeting at 10:30 with a business executive who reached out to them, eager to expand her company’s market to include the older generation. It’s a meeting Grace absolutely has to make, one she was begrudgingly okay with leaving the solace of Frankie’s arms for. Especially since, after months, she feels that the young businesswoman is about to fold to Grace’s side. God knows it’s been a process.

She’s got her hand on the curved handle of the coffee pot about to pour herself a cup when she feels those arms wrap around her waist. A puff of breath ruffles her hair and she wills the throb between her legs to go away until she can beg for another round.

“We’ve got the meeting,” Grace says by way of a deterrent. “Which probably means I’ve got a meeting since you're still dragging this morning.”

“I’ll go to the meeting, sweetheart. What kind of person would I be if I left you hanging, either personally or professionally? Let me throw on some something and I’ll slay this kid into next Tuesday.”

“She’s thirty-three and a corporate executive. Not as easy of a takedown as the last one we faced,” Grace whispers as she leans her head back and presses her cheek into Frankie’s. When she feels Frankie tense, she immediately knows her misstep. Turning around, the panic all but flows from her. “I didn’t mean…”

Frankie waves her off with a shrug and reaching behind her, grabs the mug embellished with a ‘G’ on it. She pours herself a cup and takes a sip. “Corporate weasel aside, I’ll tone it down for this one. It also helps that she’s not suing us.”

“So no shoving handfuls of nuts into your mouth?”

“I think you know better than anyone that I’ve moved on from nuts,” Frankie says with a quirk of her lips.

Grace can’t help but laugh at the ridiculous double entendre. Crass though it is, it’s one of the many reasons why she can’t help but love every second of this crazy thing they’re doing. Especially now that there’s a label to it. The conversation with Arlene floats back as she looks out the window over the sink, at the gulls dipping to take their feasts from the ocean. How animals are like that, taking what they need.

“I told Arlene,” Grace mutters as she tries to move on from the thought that doesn't seem to want to budge. She turns around from the sink to see Frankie taking a sip from her mug again but not offering anything up. “About us,” she adds for clarity, as if it isn’t obvious what she’s talking about.

“No, I know,” Frankie finally says. Grace tries to read her face but it’s weirdly impassive. Like she’s intentionally trying to get Grace to talk about something she struggled to get out the first time. Doesn’t Frankie understand how hard this is?

“You’re not giving me your opinion,” Grace says cautiously.

“You’re not giving me the details,” Frankie counters, leans over the counter. “Deets are my thing. How many times did I ask you about your sex life before I became your sex life?”

Grace can’t help but laugh. “Oh, you mean the time you asked me if Guy was gentle and gave me an orgasm or when you wanted to know if Nick had been inside me?”

“All things I have added to my kick-ass checklist,” she boasts and takes another sip. “So spill the beans. How did it go with Arlene?”

“I went back there. To Walden Villas,” Grace chokes out, losing some of the ease the conversation had begun with. She watches the contented look slide from Frankie’s face as she stands erect, nothing existing now but concern. “I went back to that God awful place yesterday and it about killed me to do so.”

They haven’t spoken much about Walden Villas, about how they both felt like they were dying inside of it. Grace knows that Frankie knows though, had felt it in her core as much as she had. How she couldn’t even close her eyes for a night and open them again without realization hitting. How every morning had dawned with what felt like a heavy rock on her sternum like maybe she’d never get up. Like she’d never learn to breathe normally again.

At least she had been able to leave, spurred on by Frankie. Having the strength to because of the woman before her. Arlene doesn’t have a Frankie and, Grace surmises, very little of her children. She’s locked inside of a prison within a prison, sometimes so lost in her own mind she can’t even remember there’s a physical maze holding her. The thought almost makes Grace weep openly. In order to avoid doing so, she staggers to the counter where Frankie stands and looks down, trying to clear her vision of tears.  

“That place did a number on you,” the softness of Frankie’s voice says. Skin connects to her own, fingers wrap and curl. It provides her a center of focus, a place to go instead of floating in desolace.

“I mean, can you blame me for feeling the way I did? That I do? You had to feel it too. We weren’t ready for that place, not by a long shot.”

“No, but I couldn’t stand the thought of us not being together. I’d do anything for you, Grace. Even live the rest of my life in a shithole if it meant we’d be together. I made my choice that day.”

 _I love you_ , Grace wants to say. Instead, she leans across the counter and stops Frankie from talking. Every kiss feels like a shattering, a piece of the old being replaced with something wonderfully new and better. It’s the thing Grace loves most, that like the gulls, she can take what she needs and doesn’t have to scrape by on the minimum.

“Arlene,” Grace backs away and whispers between them. A reminder. A stopgap for things bubbling before they get out of control.

“Yeah, your talk. Tell me everything. What she said, how it felt,” Frankie says as she traces a hand down Grace’s cheek and she can’t help but close her eyes.

“It was good. Cathartic even,” she begins. Stops. She opens her eyes to see Frankie waiting patiently for whatever comes next. “I told her we were together and she said she’d always known. Even when there wasn’t something to know. And that I deserved to be happy. That you gave that to me and she was happy for us.”

“See, honey? Everything went fine.”

“But I was so scared, Frankie. She’s the first person I…” Even now, it’s hard to get out. Through all of the shit and the brilliance, admitting that she isn’t who she has been her entire life is difficult. “That I came out to. And it’s more than I ever imagined, but better too. It felt right. You feel right.”

“Then if it felt right, it can’t be all bad from here on out,” Frankie offers. “I know some people are going to flip their lid, but that’s on them. Someone is going to hurt us down the road. Hell, we might even hurt each other. But at least we’re in this together.”

This. There is a this and a them. She’s got Frankie. She’s got a...

 _Girlfriend_.

She shivers at the word inside of her mind and lets pleasure course through herself in multiple ways. Frankie rounds the counter and grabs Grace by the hand, does a little dance with her, and then spins her around as she waltzes backward toward her studio. “Yay to coming out. Yay to us maybe making oodles of money. Give me ten minutes and then we can go dazzle the pants off of this little lady who you swear isn’t a corporate hack,” she calls out as she gets closer to the door.

“The only pants I’m interested in being off is yours,” Grace calls, mirroring Frankie’s lewd comment with one of her own, trying to lighten the heaviness floating around the room.

“Grace Hanson, you coquettish little thing,” Frankie responds with a hint of reverence and a head shake. With that, she turns around and leaves Grace to prepare for the meeting. She grabs her laptop and checks the bag to make sure they’ve got both versions of their vibe.

It’s not like they need this deal. They’ve been doing fine on their own, up 4% from the last quarter. When she’d read the numbers, a sense of pride had shot through her. All of the early morning hours printing shipping labels, packing boxes, and chewing aspirin had paid off, literally.

Frankie had even contributed to a fraction of that percentage as well. Grace has a mockup of a new product they’ve been batting around for the last few months, a finger vibrator using the same purple silicone pearls that their original version contains. The incredibly detailed drawing is a fine work of art, Frankie pouring every ounce of minutiae into it, from a three-dimensional design to a textured look so real, Grace can almost imagine it.

Again, a tingle shoots straight to her core at the memory of first seeing it. How Frankie had been nothing but smiles, the grin plastered to her face as she showed Grace the design. How Grace had felt seeing their ideas sketched out and ready to be birthed, how she’d crossed from the business side of life to the personal one quickly. Her lips had rewarded Frankie for her hard work. _In a number of ways_ , Grace thinks with a mischievous upturn of her mouth.

There has to be some reprieve from this hedonistic lifestyle, but it seems that every facet of their life contains an element of pleasure. Before she can go down the rabbit hole again, Frankie breezes back in again looking surprisingly appropriate for a business meeting. While it might be wrong of Grace to feel grateful for, she can’t help but offer up a silent thank you for the fact.

Frankie insists on driving because it seems every time they need to venture out, she's hellbent on proving that roads and highways are no longer a match, that stop signs are only temporary instead of the one time it was permanent for a little too long.

Grace slides into the passenger side while Frankie checks her mirrors, adjusts her seatbelt and, before Grace knows it, presses the button on her iPod.

“No, no! I can’t handle you listening to yourself give you a pep talk,” she tries to stop the noise before it starts. Her head shakes then as she tries to wade through the pronoun laden sentence she just spoke to see if her intended message was clear.

Frankie points in response as the music begins. The thump of the beat is more contained than her usual fare and Grace manages to catch a sampling of the lyrics. _You know what you do to me. I know what I do to you. ’Cause baby I’m a fool, baby I’m a fool for you…_

“It’s a new guy I’ve been listening to. Russ. He makes up a part of my ‘Grace is the Sexiest Piece of Ass on the Planet’ playlist,” Frankie begins.

“There’s no way you named it that.”

“iTunes is a wonderous app, Grace. Don’t sell it short or deny its capabilities. It lets me name it whatever run on sentence I want.”

Grace feels a headache creeping in and she shakes her head again and waves Frankie off. “Not that I don’t doubt it has some insane title, but give me your iPod.”

“Why?”

“Call me naturally curious,” Grace squints with a sarcastic smile. Suddenly Frankie jolts forward and covers the screen announcing the title and artist of the song. Grace tilts her head and sends a nonverbal question Frankie’s way. When she doesn’t budge her fingers, Grace has to take to words. “Frankie, what are you hiding?”

“Nothing,” is the answer, followed by shifty eyes. Her hand remains immobile. Traffic flows around them and Grace’s brain ambles to dying on the freeway in a sardine can while fighting over an iPod.

“Why bring up the playlist if you’re embarrassed?” she presses.

“Okay, you know how they say hindsight is 20/20? Well, that’s the case right now because I don’t exactly want you to get bent out of shape about some of the choices.”

“Okay,” Grace says softly, understandingly. Frankie closes her eyes as if in thanks and removes her hand, pressing as much of her palms together as she can manage while driving.

When it boils down to it, Grace has changed a lot over that span of the last four years. Despite that, she still has some shitty qualities, she knows. It’s one of those that make her lunge for the iPod and turn her body away toward the door as Frankie lets out a yelp.

“You said okay!” Frankie all but squeals.

“I lied,” Grace deadpans. She backs out of the song and looks at the actual title of the playlist. It is indeed not named what Frankie said, but does have an equally long marker: Grace Is A Complicated Human But She’s My Human And I Wouldn’t Change A Thing.

“Sort of like that Aerosmith song,” Frankie says, but then makes a face. “Fuck, no. That’s ‘Don’t Wanna Miss A Thing.’ Same idea, different diction.”

Grace presses the button forward and it skips from the one titled "Cherry Hill" to "Lose Control."

“I told you. Russ is a big deal right now,” Frankie nods.

She listens to the words and knows why this one was picked for the playlist. It’s why all of this has been so damn scary the past few months-because control is utterly lacking. Getting the gist, she moves on to the next one. When she hears the words, she freezes.

 _I'm a mess and I will always be_ _  
_ _Do you want to stick around and see me drown?_ _  
_ _Fuck, I'm about to lose it all_ _  
_ _I'm a drunk and I will always be_ _  
_ _Beggin baby take my hand before I fall back down_  
Fuck, I'm about to lose it all

“Is this what you think of me?” she feels herself ask.

Hope and time are things she was sure had assuaged the impact of her, the brutality she was often a catalyst of when they were starting out as roommates. Back then, the martini holding, drunken vampire woman wouldn’t have minded a list of songs on an antiquated piece of technology that maybe said a little too much lyrically. But now? Those feelings she’s tried to keep at bay rush forth.

“It’s a part of you,” Frankie doesn’t sugarcoat and it hurts a bit in its honesty.

“A crappy part of me,” she can’t help but mumble, lost in dark thoughts of who she’s been. A person who is sitting on the other side of a chasm and doesn’t at all like the person across the void anymore. She continues on. “'Peak' by Drake?”

“We are kind of in our honeymoon season. I also put Filthy on there by the one and only Justin Timberlake. Cause you know, we’re kind of filthy together. In a fun way. But I don’t have meat to work with.”

Grace’s thumb runs across another in the list called “Let Her Go” and her heart clamps. _If I let her go, will I regret it? Will I forget it?_ _Well, it's somethin' I don’t know._

“Could be in reference to Nick. Could go all the way back to me letting you go to go with Jacob. In the grand scheme of things, the lyrics fit,” Frankie says quietly.

They listen as it gets to the end of the song. _After all the trials, after everythin', Wedding ring, I can change your last name._ That clamp? It’s a vice grip squeezing her heart now because, for the first time, she lets herself entertain the thought. Grace lets herself feel a ring on her finger and almost aches with the fact that it’s not there. Damnnitt…

“Are any of these fucking songs happy?” she all but sniffs and jams the device back in the holder.

Frankie looks genuinely upset and she starts to slow down as they pass by floating scenery. She reaches over to turn off the music as they pull up next to their destination.

Grace tries to shift her mindset to business, not waiting for the answer. She casts her eyes toward the building, seemingly innocuous and blending in with all the others on the street. Nothing to announce it as one of the Companies to Watch of the Year, so efficiently run that CEO is fighting people off with a stick to join her under her umbrella. How and why Vybrant is on her radar is beyond Grace’s scope of comprehension.

A hand on hers drags her back to moments ago, to the swirling whirlpool of emotions.

“Who needs a fucking song to remind me of you when I wake up and lay my eyes on you every single morning? When I get to touch you and hold you from now until my life ends? You’re my person, Grace. You’ve been my person, in all your forms. Don’t ever doubt that.” Frankie pulls Grace’s hand to her lips then and takes the heaviness away with her mouth.

A laugh escapes Grace and she also hates another shitty part of her, the one that becomes a ball of nerves and bleeding heart when Frankie goes deep.

“So are we going to do this damn thing?” Frankie tries to glaze over the tense car ride, as ready to take on the world as ever.

Her blue eyes shine in the sunlight, making Grace’s stomach flip-flop. An act that never ceases to amaze her. An act that never ceases.

The playlist gets shoved to the side, out of sight for now and slowly dissipating from Grace’s mind with fizziness.

“Yeah,” Grace leans over and takes Frankie’s bottom lip between hers, nipping gently. Hotly. Almost to the level of scorching. It takes everything in her to back away. “Let’s do this damn thing.”

****************************

Like most everything else in her life, Grace can’t remember exactly how they ended up here. Maybe it was Frankie who made the first move after Grace tried to pry a bag of French fries out her hands, or Grace who protested much too loudly to even really sound earnest before they were in a physical tug of war. One that ended up with the two of them gasping and grinding against one another as the microwave dinged to remind Frankie of her now forgotten spoils.

It’s always been like this with them though. Both of them getting off on the challenge the other gives. It only took a while before they admitted to one another that it was a kink they shared, a dirty little secret between the two of them. A deviant behavior that was best left hashed out between the sheets.

Grace’s skin prickles at the remembrance, the sexual spiral out control that they both took before ending up here. Landing a share of their company with one of the top female-led businesses didn’t hurt either, so potent an aphrodisiac that a celebration was bound to happen. French fries forgotten for heated sex and whispered smut.

 _Yeah, you may be good at bossing other people around, but I can shake that attitude from you with one touch of my finger here_ , Frankie had murmured, hand against Grace. Or when Grace, having had enough of it, had the sense in her despite Frankie’s prying pointer to shoot back, _you know you like to fuck me this way, when I’m riding a high and ready to ride you too_. She’d thrust her hips then against Frankie and let the sensations take over.

Just how much is she supposed to allow, to take, before audacity slams and reason returns? An infinite amount is the answer that’s as blatant as when she’d wailed her release.

Frankie had soothed her down then but has long since given up on trying to muffle her cries anymore, like she knows what’s been pent up can’t be caged when you poke it so hard. It needs room to stretch and dig its toes in before it breaks free into the world.

It ended and transitioned, Frankie’s fingers flexing for a reprieve. They’re old, Grace knows, and arthritis is a fact at this juncture, no matter to what degree. Frankie will be combatting it in the future as Grace’s body thrums at the thought of the act and she rides a latent wave of electricity.

She glances up at Frankie who has reclined on the pillows of Grace’s bed, a book poised precariously between her thighs. Glasses sit perched on her nose, but she remains stark naked everywhere else.

Lazily, Grace skims the flesh outside of her thighs and sees Frankie jump slightly at the contact. She lies curled up on her belly, soft lamplight casting shadows on her posterior that she has long since given up on covering. Frankie makes her feel open and warm, not a thing to be hidden by darkness and shame.

They shouldn’t be like this, not at their age, Yet Grace can feel a dull spike of arousal curl itself between her legs again. Frankie seems amused, even if unnerved by Grace’s touch but goes back to reading anyway.

It’s nothing of any grand interest, a novel discarded to her nightstand by a woman Grace frequently reads, partially out of curiosity, partially out of duty. So many authors these days write the same type of literature, the same worn and tired tropes resorted to for entertainment value. It’s a decent enough story, but not nearly as fascinating as the tale Grace could etch with her tongue just below where the volume sits perched atop Frankie’s legs.

“Grace,” Frankie chastises as Grace’s fingers begin to fidget with the pages haphazardly, annoyingly.

“You can’t honestly be interested in that. Not right now,” Grace responds, letting her hand fall toward the skin inside Frankie’s thigh now.

“No, more like a brief interlude for an old woman who can’t keep up with her vivacious girlfriend all of the time,” Frankie answers.

There the word is, upheld and floating free. Liberated from the recesses of the heart and openly out. It courses through Grace and she feels more alive than she ever has.

She gets to her knees and pulls the book from Frankie’s hands, tossing it onto the floor and crawling up the expanse of Frankie’s body. Inching upward, she rests herself gently in Frankie’s lap, intertwining one of their hands together. With her right hand, she removes Frankie’s glasses and deposits them on the nightstand.

The movement creates a glorious friction between their naked bodies and Frankie hisses at the movement while Grace closes her eyes and indulges in the sensation. Dragging her body back to sit more squarely on top of Frankie’s, she moves the long hair off of the smooth shoulder in front of her, dipping to seal her mouth to the notch between neck and collarbone.

Below her, a soft sigh emits from Frankie’s mouth. Grace sits back up to gaze down at Frankie again, who brings her own hand out of their locked digits to draw along the curve of Grace’s breast, then raking across a nipple and making it peak with anticipation.

It’s times like these Grace is thankful that her girlfriend is an artist, so delightfully delicate at fine-tuning Grace’s body into overdrive mode. Who would have thought that enduring all of the paint smears and flakes of chipping color in the most random of places would end up being the thing that Grace cherishes most about Frankie. In her ability to take the blank and broken and sometimes ugly and shape it into something newly beautiful.

 _Just like me_ , Grace thinks as Frankie’s tongue licks lightly around the areola, pausing for a second before using her hands to get more of Grace into her warm mouth. A mewling sound escapes Grace and she feels a bit of wetness pool between her legs, a sensation she’s sure Frankie can feel below her.

Her body shouldn’t be functioning on this level, backtracking into horny pubescence like she’s some sort of female Benjamin Button. But dammit, even if her body reminds her of age more often than not, these moments with Frankie let her ignore it by putting it on the back burner.

If she lets herself take time with this, build up the experience with a massive amount of foreplay, she can almost convince Frankie to not reach for the lube an arm's length away.

It’s another challenge Grace offers to Frankie, albeit silently. _Let my body respond to you_ , she pleads with a look. _Let me show you how much I physically want you._

“I know what you’re doing,” Frankie murmurs against the swell of Grace’s breast and bites down lightly as her eyes turn upward.

“Then you know to fucking let it happen,” Grace snaps, reaching between their bodies to run a finger between her own legs. She removes it coated and drags it maddeningly across Frankie’s own breast, getting the bud to mirror her own.

“You’ll regret that,” Frankie says, only half-heartedly though since her eyes have shut and her head has lolled back onto Grace’s pillows.

“Oh? How’s that?” Grace asks with a whisper, leaning forward so that their chests touch and she’s able to get a better angle on Frankie beneath her. Blindly, she manages to bring her thumb softly across Frankie’s clit and she feels Frankie try to spread her legs despite being pinned down on either side by Grace’s.

Things are beginning to burn and ache on Grace’s body, sadly not from the sexual acts either. She’d once admitted to Frankie that she had pleased herself to the glorious end despite the searing pain in her wrist, leaving it all on the field. Now is one of those times to rise to the occasion.

The woman below her is so much greater than herself so Grace is determined to soldier through this since she was so lovingly and adequately taken care of earlier. This experience, right now, isn’t about getting herself off. It’s about listening to Frankie all but scream her name so that it reverberates off the walls of their beach house and causes all the electricity in San Diego to dim from the sheer magnitude of it.

She focuses her attention again to between the slope of their bodies, her own hand occasionally brushing deliciously against herself while also pleasing Frankie. Her other hand reaches out to rest on Frankie’s hip.

With every carefully crafted movement, Grace descends into a spiral of pleasure as well because Frankie is keeping Grace’s hand tightly positioned between the two of them, causing a ménage a deux of delight.

“Now I know what you’re doing,” Grace pants, sliding a finger gently into Frankie’s folds. Frankie gasps and when Grace begins to move again, the top part of her thumb grazes across her own throbbing clit.

“I told you you’d regret it,” Frankie responds, gripping at the sheets on either side of her.

Grace can’t help but think this feels like anything other than regret, the movements so damn good that she can’t even feel guilty for building herself up for a second curtain call again tonight. Frankie is even encouraging it.

“This was supposed to be about you,” she breathes, losing control by the second. From the look on Frankie’s face, the other woman isn’t too far behind her.

“We are always better when we’re in it together though,” Frankie manages to get out, followed by a moan as Grace lets another long digit slide into her, covered now in parts of both of them.

“Dammit, Frankie,” Grace pants, “What the fuck…”

Her hips rock against her hand between them and Frankie’s hips begin to thrust toward her. Grace leans back and feels her breasts sway with her movements, wishing they could be touched now to add to the ministrations below. It’s all so damn hot that Grace has to fight the bubbling coil tugging her from the inside.

Her wrist has just about reached its limit and so have her knees. Frankie seems to sense this and surges forward, holding Grace by the waist with one hand and helping them along with her other. She sloppily connects her mouth to Grace’s, mostly due to their angle and the rest to the sounds tumbling from her.

“I’m so close,” she urges, spurring Grace’s hand to increase speed and angles.

“I’m trying to wait,” Grace pleads. “Please. I don’t know how much longer I can…”

With a couple of more flicks of her wrist, a swirl of her fingers, Grace feels Frankie come. The force of it is always a bringer of awe,

She’s about stop the motions between them, feeling Frankie’s aftershocks subsiding, until Frankie grabs her wrist and keeps it going.

“Don’t you dare stop, Grace Hanson,” she warns, bringing her other hand that was gripping the bed sheets to slide between them and hide within Grace now.

“No, Frankie” she protests, but it’s as hollow as it sounds. Before she knows it, her own core is clenching for the second time tonight, blissfully following Frankie in another energy-sapping orgasm.

She finally stills her hand that has yet to be removed from Frankie and sags against her lover's shoulder, spent and a pile of goop. Frankie retracts slowly from Grace, who follows suit when she regains partial control of her sex-addled brain.

Her knees really ache now and she falls to the side of Frankie, lifeless. “Now who’s too much for whom,” she asks into her pillow. Feeling begins to return to other parts of her that aren’t throbbing in remembered ecstasy.

Frankie grabs the sheets, covering their sweating bodies and reclines back again. A smile tugs at her lips as Grace manages to open an eye and look in her direction. Her heart constricts and she feels it rising in her throat, unable to hold it back any longer.

“I love you, Frankie.”

It comes out easily, feels good to have its essence around the room. It warms Grace in a different way and she feels, for one out of only a handful of times in her life, content with speaking it. Especially to the person who is on the receiving end.

“What?” Frankie blinks, looking almost astounded.

So this is what staggers her. Not dry humping on a vegan leather couch or dropping trou in their hall bathroom while Frankie touched her into oblivion or her getting eaten out at in Del Taco. This, a seemingly small gesture, containing unbound impact.

“I love you. So much,” Grace finds the strength and courage inside herself to say it again. She slowly rises, the pace set by her exhausted body. Her forehead comes to rest against Frankie’s and she stays a moment just to inhale the same air.

“Should I question what brought this on?” Frankie asks.

“You _are_ questioning it…”

For a second, Grace panics that she’s alone on a raft in the middle of nowhere. There’s no one to save her from this, not even herself. It’s too late now to seek purchase on solid ground.

“It’s just, we haven’t said it to one another. I didn’t know…”

Grace can’t help but back away now, needing to look into Frankie’s eyes for what comes next. She feels her brow furrow and she shakes her head in disbelief.

“How can you honestly not know? How can you even question the depth of my…” Grace stammers then loses the voice in her throat. _Heart_ , she wants to say but it’s too damn much. It’s so fucking much. It’s everything and that’s why she has to finish this. Because it means more now than it ever has.  

“You’re a tough one to crack, Grace Hanson,” Frankie sighs. Then she makes a face of her own, to which Grace tilts her head questioningly. “Your last name could use some work too.”

Something hard lances through. It must be called that when it’s so difficult to assign to a specific emotion, mixtures of things stirred in the beaker of Grace’s body. When it’s abstract and mostly unfeasible to grab a particular description with one’s fingers.

Dare she feel hope? Can she allow herself that, to let it overtake the fear?

“Frankie…”

“There’s purpose to my playlist. I mean, eventually, I had thought, _just maybe_. But it seemed way bigger than me most of the time, like I couldn’t hold the idea of you being my wife for very long because it was better than I’m supposed to have.” Frankie looks a bit introspective then, maybe a little sad too.

“I’m the one used to punishing herself,” Grace replies and it’s the most honest she’s been about the delicate cord attached to herself destructive habits: the pills to float in, the denial of food to make her a sliver of a person, the alcohol to drown.

“It’s not about punishment. It’s about the karmic balance of life. Of what I’ve stuffed into the world and what I get back from her. Everything has a price cosmically and you, you seem worth way more than I’ve put in.” She holds Grace’s hand at this and smiles, runs the other down her bare shoulder blade. “And I’m not saying it has to happen tomorrow or the day after, or really ever if you’re not digging the idea. I’m just saying it might be nice.”

_Nice._

Boiling the heft of something down to simplicity. To of a Grace, not Hanson and maybe not even a Bergstein, but a _Frankie’s_ Grace.

And in the end, maybe that’s become the point of their agreement, the morphing and shaping of it to what it is now. Maybe the whole of life isn’t to just exist but exist well. To not go at it alone in solitude and silence.

The ultimate finish to their life, not by themselves but part of a unit. In the grander scheme of things, isn’t that the resolution most seek? At their age, it’s both comforting and refreshing in its unlikeliness, to be linked inexorably with skin and bones and soul.

“Yeah, it might be nice,” Grace echoes.

“So meet me in Mexico?” Frankie pokes lightly, indents into Grace’s skin.

“Mexico,” Grace nods, a could be plan, a could be promise. Definitively though, life as a pair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As always, thanks for all of your kind reviews, comments, and the love. I am back to writing with more limited time, but I always have something in the works with these two. Until next time, fandom.


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